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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Next Level Soul podcast, where we ask

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the big questions about life. Why are we here? Is

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this all? There?

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Speaker 2: Is?

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Speaker 1: What is my soul's mission? We attempt to answer those

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with some of the most fascinating and thought provoking guests

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on the planet. Today, I am your host, Alex Ferrari. Now,

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head over to next levelsoul dot tv and start streaming

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your awakening. Now let's begin today's episode. Disclaimer. The views

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and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the

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guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions

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of this show, its host, or any of the companies

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they represent. I like to welcome to the show, Rupert Sheldrake.

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Speaker 2: Hey, you doan Rupert pretty well? Thanks Ilex, Thank you.

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Speaker 1: So much for being here, my friend. I am fascinated

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by your work. It is endless rabbit holes left and

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right that you can go down with your work. So

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I'm just gonna start you. I'm gonna start off with

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my first question and regarding the more your theory of

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morphic resonance and what it suggests about the nature, that

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nature has its own memory, that habits, not fixed laws

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shapes of the universe. Can you explain this theory that

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you have.

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Speaker 2: It's basically, as you say, the idea that there's a

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kind of memory inherent in nature. The so called laws

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of nature are more like habits. They've been evolving along

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with the universe and along with life. That memory is

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basically built into everything. Into self organizing systems. I mean

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it's not everything, but anything that's self organizing, which includes atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, ecosystems, planets, galaxies,

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solar systems. Anything that's self organizing, I think has a

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kind of inherent memory, a collective memory through morphic resonance.

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Each kind of thing has a collective memory. So each

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species has a collective memory, and wich individual draws upon

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it and contributes to it. So that's the basic idea,

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and its most radical implication is probably that our own

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memories work bio morphic resonance, the principle that similar things

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influence subsequent similar things. You and I are most similar

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to ourselves in the past, and I think that that

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similarity means that we resonate with ourselves in the past.

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Most specifically and basically, then it says that our memories

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are not stalled inside our brains, which is the usual assumption,

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but rather we tune into them. Brains are more like

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TV receivers than like video recorders.

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Speaker 1: The versions of ourselves that in the past quote unquote

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that we're accessing. Would it be kind of like, in

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the more metaphysical term, the Akacak records or the acacic

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field or a field that we're able to kind of

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tap into. And that's kind of the Is it like

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the cloud? Is that all of our memories in the

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cloud and we're just able to kind of pull from them.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's the kind of metaphor. Yes, and the Akashak

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records a kind of metaphor. I think the problem with

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them as metaphors is the Acashak record gives the impression

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of being somewhere up in the sky, some kind of

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series of filing cabinets or hard drives or something, and

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so does the idea of the cloud, because the cloud

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depends on data processing centers using huge amounts of energy

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with lots of hard drives and flash storage systems or

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whatever they have. But what I'm suggesting with morphic resonance

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is not that it's stored out there somewhere and we

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then retrieve it, but rather there's a direct resonance across time,

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like a TV program when it's broadcast from a TV

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transmitter and picked up by a TV set or TV aerial,

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and then a TV set is invisible and it's crossing space.

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It's not stored somewhere in space. It's just a resonance

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across space, and morphic resonance is a kind of resonance

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across time. And so what I'm suggesting the whole of

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the past is potentially present everywhere, and you tune into it,

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but it's not when you're not tuning into it, sort

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of stored out somewhere. The idea of memory storage, you see,

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is spatial. A store is something in space, and akash record

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is something in akasha, which is space. But memory is

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by its very nature relation in time, not space. And

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although we store things in written writing, I suppose the

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first storage of memories was through clay tablets and in

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carving things on stone and so on, or writing on

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papyrus or something. So we have various forms of storing

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information now flash drives and hard drives and so on.

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But the way our actual memory works. You know, when

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I meet someone that I recognized that I met some

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years ago, there's nothing about that feeling of recognition that

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depends in my experience on memory stores inside the brain

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retrieval systems, et cetera. I just recognize them, and I

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think it's a kind of direct resonance.

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Speaker 1: Interesting, and you were mentioning in the morphic residence theory

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that all things are kind of connected in one way,

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shape or form, so by species. So like all the

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dogs in the world kind of feed into this collective

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of all dog experience and so on. Well, then that

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would also obviously implicate human consciousness, human ability. So are

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you saying that everything that Well, basically it's a very

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deep spiritual idea that we're all connected. We are all one,

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and this is just an illusion that you and I

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are separate from each other. Does does that make sense?

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Speaker 2: Well, we are connected, but we're not connected all the

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time in the same way. We're connected when we come

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into resonance through similarity. It's similarity that connects us. And

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so if you're doing a particular crossword puzzle, for example,

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and I'm doing the same puzzle, and if you've done

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it first, I might pick up the answers quicker because

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you've already solved the problem. But if you're doing a

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different crossword puzzle, there wouldn't be that same kind of resonance.

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And you know, if you're looking at a particular kind

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of picture and I look at the same picture, there

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might be a kind of resonance, but that wouldn't be

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the case with a different picture. So it's specific resonance

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depends on things being similar, the situation being similar. We're

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all similar to some extent, being human. But in a

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way this is rather like the psychologist Jung's idea of

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the collective unconscious, where we all to have into a

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collective memory, a collective human memory, but we tap in

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more specifically to the memory of people who are more

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like us, predominantly members of our own family in the

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presence in the past. They're the people who are most

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similar to us, and with identical twins, then you know

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they're very similar, and so I think they'd have a

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great deal of morphic resonance, which is one reason their

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lives are so similar.

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Speaker 1: So what you're talking about almost sounds like that the monkey.

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That monkey. It's an experiment or a phenomenon where there

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was three different islands with the monkeys that were on

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these islands, and then one of them figured out how

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to do something on one island, and the other two

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islands full of monkeys did the same thing, but there

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was no way they ever connected or had a phone

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call with each other. Essentially, is that kind of what

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you're talking about.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that's sometimes called the hundredth monkey effect.

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Speaker 1: That's it.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I don't myself use that example, but because it's

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not exactly clear what really happened with these monkeys off

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Japanese islands. And when the theory was first popularized by

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Lyle Watson, who was a popular British science writer, he

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when he told the story, said, let us imagine for

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the purpose of argument, that when one more monkey did

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it save the hundredth monkey, then it spread to all

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the others. So he made it clear he was sort

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of embroidering on the story. I don't use that example myself,

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but it's that kind of thing. I prefer the thousandth

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rat to the hundredth monkey because there have been experiments

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with rats learning a new trick escaping from a water maze,

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and what the data show is not that nothing happened

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until you got up to a certain number and then

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they all did it, but rather the more that did it,

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the bigger the effect elsewhere. So it's not all or none.

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It's a kind of gradual effect. It depends on the numbers.

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Speaker 1: On a kind of scientific standpoint, or at least on

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a materialistic standpoint. Is this or even maybe a metaphysical standpoint,

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Does this mean that, like with a thousand rats that

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you were talking about, if you know rat one, Rat two,

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Rat three, does it then that that signals or that

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sends some sort of information to the collective. And I'm

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trying to wrap my head around it. It's kind of

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like it's like we're sending messages back in an invisible

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field that other rats are not picking up because some

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other words, and the more of the rats that are

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in this group are doing it, the stronger the signal

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to more rats is that what you're going to say,

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We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor

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and now back to the show.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's it, but they're not necessarily sending it to

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a collective. A rat that's doing it now, when it's

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confronted with this particular puzzle or problem, comes into resonance

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with all the previous rats that solved it, So it

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will resonate with all of them at the same time,

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and there'll be a kind of combined influence of all

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these different rats. So it's the more there are, the

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stronger the influence will be.

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Speaker 1: So so then what I'm trying to wrap my head

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around is what is the When you say resonance, is

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that frequency? Is that vibration? Is that What is that

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thing that they're tapping into? Is my question.

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Speaker 2: Everything in nature is vibratory. I mean, in the nineteenth

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century people thought atoms were little bits of stuff like

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solid billiard balls. But we now know that they're not.

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We know that they're vibratory patterns of electrons, resonant standing

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waves of electrons around the nucleus, which itself is vibratory.

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You know, medical techniques like nuclear magnetic resonance tell you

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this that the nucleus has frequencies, vibrations, molecule of vibratory,

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crystals have lattice vibrations. Our own cells, all the proteins

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have vibratory rhythms. The cell as a whole has rhythms.

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You know, our whole body has rhythms, daily rhythms of

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sleeping and waking. Women have monthly rhythms. Then we have

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the heartbeat, the brain waves of various frequencies, breathing rates,

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and everything in nature is essentially rhythmic or vibratory or oscillatory.

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So what I'm suggesting is that the entire vibratory pattern

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is what resonates. It's not like you alex that be

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reduced to a single frequency four four or five hurts

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or something. You've got thousands of different frequencies all arranged

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in spatial patterns, and that's what's doing the vibrating, not

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some kind of reduction to a single frequency. So it's

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a complex pattern of vibration that's involved, and morphic resonance

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depends on the similimilarity of that pattern of vibrating resonating

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across time, picking up these memory influences from the past.

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That's the hypothesis. So you know, this is a scientific

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hypothesis that can be tested. You know, it may not

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be the best way of thinking about it, but anyway,

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that's how it stands at the moment.

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Speaker 1: As you're explaining this. The thing that pops into my

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mind is from my studies in the spiritual space, especially

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the Eastern religions like Hinduism, Yogic philosophies and so on.

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There are stories of yogis who are able to vibrate

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themselves at such a high frequency that people can feel

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their resonance just by being in the room. There's magical

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stories of biolocation or levitation or things like that, which

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can seem more fantastical, but it's still part of their

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history thousands and thousands of years old. Is that. Well,

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what's your take on those ideas, on these kind of

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more spiritual ideas. But it's connected to what you're talking

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about in many ways.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, it is connected. I mean, the Hindu

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philosophy of nature and the Buddhist philosophy of nature takes

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memory in nature. For granted. You know, the ideas I'm

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putting forward of memory and nature are unfamiliar in the

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Western world, but in the Eastern world they've been sort

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of standard way of looking at things for thousands of years.

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I mean, so the idea of an inherent memory is

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built into their idea of karma, for example, and you

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need something like an inherent memory in nature if you're

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going to explain any form of life outter death, for example.

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The standard mechanistic materialist theory of memory, which is the

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dominant orthodoxy in the West, taught in all universities, the

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dominant orthodoxy ninety nine point nine percent of neuroscientists and

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brain scanning departments, and that kind of thing. That model

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says all memories are stored inside the brain as physical traces,

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modified nerve endings, changes in proteins, maybe changes in DNA

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or RNA. Those are all the standard assumptions that our

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science is based on. Now people have spent one hundred

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years trying to find these traces in the brain without

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success so far, and I think the reason they haven't

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succeeded is because they're not there. But you see what

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that standard Western theory means. It's a materialist theory. It

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says that everything's made of matter, even memories. What that

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means is that if your memories are stored inside your brain,

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then when you die, your brain decays and all your

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memories will be wiped out, and therefore there's no possibility

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of any kind survival of bodily death in heaven, hell, purgatory, rebirth, reincarnation,

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last judgment, any of these theories of survival are automatically

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refuted by the materialist theory of memory, which is why

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most materialists are atheists and think that all religions are

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based on pure fantasy thinking because they're so sure they're right.

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They're sure they're right, not because the evidence is overwhelming.

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It's very underwhelming. There's the evidence for memory storage and

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the brain is barely at all. But it's because it's

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an assumption of their worldview. Now, if you have the

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idea that memories are not stalled inside the brain, that

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the brain tunes into them when the brain decays, it

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doesn't mean the memories are all eliminated. They're still potentially there.

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They go on, contributing to the collective memory, to the

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ancestral field of each family. And also in the case

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of Hindu and Buddhist theories of reincarnational rebirth, those memories

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could then carry over and shape a subsequent life of

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somebody else. Though, So you see, you can't have reincarnational

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rebirth if memories are embedded in brains, because they're all

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wiped out at death. Nor can you have heaven, hell, purgatory,

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or a last judgment, because if you appeared before your

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maker at the last judgment for that final moment and

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you've forgotten who you were and what you'd done, it

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wouldn't be a very meaningful experience. So even you know,

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all theories, all religious theories of survival, presuppose the survival

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of memory in some form or another. Now I don't

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know how it works exactly, how it survives. I wish

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I did. But all I'm saying is that the theory

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of morphic resonance that memory is tuned into rather than

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stored in the brain, leaves open the question of survival,

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whereas the standard materialist theory shuts the door, slams the

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door in the face of any theory of survival.

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Speaker 1: Rupert, I have to ask you, you have been a

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trouble maker in the world for a long time with

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these wonderful theories that go against the orthodox views of life.

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How do you personally for people out there listening who

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might you know, might want to be a little bit

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of a trouble And I say troublemaker with all the

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love in the world, because I also am a trouble

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maker as well. How did you continue to move forward

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against the grain all your career like this? Because there's

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so many people in the scientific community, and there are

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more of them waking up every day that are going

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this doesn't make sense. This quantum physicists are starting to

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discover things that are just like no, no, no, no,

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that what you guys are saying is wrong. Darwin wasn't

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all the way right, you know, and all these kind

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of ideas is how would you, what advice would you

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give them and how did you keep going against the

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grain for all these years?

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Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I didn't start off as a troublemaker.

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I started off being very successful in the regular scientific world.

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You know. I was a scholar at Claire College, Cambridge.

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I studied at Harvard where I did history and philosophy

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of science. I have Cambridge PhD. I was an academic

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at Cambridge University, you know, a fellow of Clare College.

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I was a research fellow of the Royal Society, the

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most prestigious scientific institution in Britain, is a bit like

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the National Academy of Sciences, you know. I won prizes

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and that kind of thing. So it didn't start off

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like trying to cause trouble. I was at Cambridge. I

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was doing research on plant form, how plant form develops,

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and I came to the conclusion that genes couldn't exp

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playing the inheritance of form because genes only code for proteins,

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and that the form must depend on fields. Morphogenetic fields,

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which a concept I didn't invent. It was invented in

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the nineteen twenties. But I was trying to think how

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the fields are inherited, and I then realized the only

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way that this could work that I could see, would

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be through some kind of memory moving directly across time,

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something that simply wasn't in the standard scientific repertoire in

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the West.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,

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and now back to the show.

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Speaker 2: And so when I came up with this idea, which

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is a very very long time ago in nineteen seventy three,

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I of course knew this was heretical. And when I

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discussed it with colleagues in Cambridge, among my scientific colleagues,

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it just they thought I was joking, or they couldn't

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see the point, or people just said it was completely

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unnecessary because we're going to figure everything out in terms

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of molecular biology within ten or twenty years. And I said, well,

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I don't think you are, and I think we need

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something else. Anyway, it was clear it was going to

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be controversial, so I didn't publish it because I wanted

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to be sure more shore anyway, so I took a

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job in India. I worked in an international agricultural institute

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on crop improvement, trying to do something useful. I think

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we did do something useful and I was in India

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for seven years altogether. And when I went to India

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and started telling people, Indian colleagues and people about morphic resonance,

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I got the exact opposite of the shock horror response

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nearliar with from Cambridge. You know, most Indians said, oh,

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there is nothing new in this idea. Ancient Rishies have

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said this of years ago. And what was frustrating there

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was that I couldn't get them to do anything about it.

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I said, but look, you're a scientist. If the whole

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of science as we know it is missing something major,

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why not change what you're doing research on and you know,

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actually prove the ancient Brish is right. But none of

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them were willing to do that because they wanted to

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keep their jobs and their careers and so on. So

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I spent five years thinking about this in India, where

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the atmosphere was more favorable, because hardly anyone I met

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there thought this was crazy. They just thought it was

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sort of they'd heard it all before. They had this

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kind of blase attitude to it. Anyway, it was more

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it was less frustrating than the Cambridge attitude. But I

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read and I thought, and I read more and I

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discussed it more until I felt fairly sure that that

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the theory is right, but that there wasn't anything actually

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wrong with it, that it was a possibility, there was

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no evidence that went against it, that it was a

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real possibility. So I wrote my book, the first book,

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which is art called A New Science of Life on

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Morphic Resnors, which published in nineteen eighty one in eighty

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two in the United States, and I knew it would

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be controversial, and indeed it was. I mean, I hadn't

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deliberately set out to provoke people, but the editor of

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Nature journal really took against it, and he wrote a

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famous editorial on the front page of Nature, the leading

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international journal of science, called a book for burning, and

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it was savagely attacked by quite a lot of people.

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But the point is I wasn't too upset because I

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was expecting that it would call I didn't expect how

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furious and emotional the opposition would be. I expected a

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more gentle and their debate. I hadn't expected kind of

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a blistering attack, with ad hominem attacks and invectives. The

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editor of Nature, comparing my book unfavorably to mind camp

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By Hitler. I hadn't expected that kind of thing. But

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the thing is, though some people were terribly against it,

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a lot of people weren't a lot of people were

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curious and interested, and some people actually liked the idea,

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particularly Jungian psychotherapists, because it fits very well with the

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work of Young. And then when I was in the

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US and I gave some seminars in universities, but then

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people in other places, like the Esslen Institute in California

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got very interested in it, and I found when I

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met people who I had a great time discussing it with,

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like Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham, and they became very

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close friends, and we had conversations every year trying out

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this and other ideas. So it wasn't as if life

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totally collapsed. I mean, some doors closed, other doors opened,

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and doing research in these more unconventional areas of science

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turned out to be fun. So I can't say that

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I suffered horribly. And I don't really take personally these

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attacks I've had, because these are people who believe they

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know the truth. I mean, most materialists, especially militant materialists,

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are convinced they understand the way nature is on the

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basis of materialist assumptions, and they think that is science

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and that they know the truth. Any attack on this

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is an attack on science and reason, and they get

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terribly emotional about that. But they're not evil people. They're

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people who believe that they're fighting for the truth. I

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just think they've got an unfortunate a narrow view of

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what science is and what science could be.

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Speaker 1: Let me ask you, with all the research you've done,

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and specifically the time you spent in India, which I'm sure

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was pretty eye opening because you were exposed to probably

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a lot of philosophies and ideas and Hinduism and Yogic

410
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ideas as well, what is your take or what is

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your understanding of the soul or the concept of the soul?

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And is this a carrier of the memories that you're

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talking about, Because it's from my understanding from the mystics

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that I've spoken to, the soul is not only within you,

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it actually expands outside of you a bit more than

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their own human shape and is actually outside of you

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a little bit more, sometimes even above you, according to

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the mystics. So what is your take on the soul?

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Speaker 2: It's important to back up a bit and look at

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the history of the concept, because what most people today

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think of it the soul is a kind of try

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catered view that's been short, that's been shaped by four

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hundred years of scientific materialism or the narrow mechanistic worldview.

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And so you know, if if I could have three

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minutes or so to explain that, I get back to

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your question. In Greek thought, the most important philosopher of

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life was Aristotle, who was a student of Plato. And

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Plato and Aristotle said that all living things have souls.

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That's what makes them alive. They're animate, they have a soul,

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And the Greek word for soul is of course psyche.

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So by living things he didn't just mean animals and plants.

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He meant the earth. The earth was a living thing,

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the planets were alive for Aristotle, and the whole universe.

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You know, Plato thought of the whole universe as having

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a soul, the world soul, the anima mundi. So a

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soul was not something confined to living organisms that excrete

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and reproduce and that sort of thing. It was the

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feature of life. But life was much bigger than biology

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from their point of view. So when Aristotle came to biology.

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He said, there's three levels of soul. In biology, there's

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the vegetative soul, which shapes the body, and the plants

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have vegetative souls. The reason that a palm tree grows

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the way it does, or an oak tree grows the

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way it does, is because it has a palm soul

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or an oak sol And when an acorn germinates and

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starts growing, it's attracted towards the mature form of the

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oak tree by the soul. The soul works by attraction.

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It has what he called enteloche, the end within itself.

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It pulls the developing organist and towards its goal, which

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is the mature, reproducing form of the oak tree. So

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animals have vegetative souls true too, which shape their embryology

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and shape their growth and maintain the body after injury,

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help underlie regeneration. Newt salamander can regenerate limb. If you

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cut a limb off, we can regenerate skin and liver

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and the gut lining and so on. Our blood cells

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are regenerated all the time. So this regenerative, formative and

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regenerative aspect of the body is the vegetative soul. Then,

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in addition to that, animals have an animal soul which

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underlies their animal nature, their instincts, their sensations, their movements,

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their behavior, and that's why we call them animals. The

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word animal means soul in Latin, so all animals have

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souls on that view, and then human beings have in

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a day to the vegetative soul that shapes our body

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and underlies its health and recovery from disease, and our

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animal soul that gives us our animal instincts, in animal

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nature and animal senses, which we share with many other animals,

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particularly mammals.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,

469
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and now back to the show.

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Speaker 2: We have what he called the intellectual soul, which is

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to do with fort, language, reason, meaning things that we

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have that animals don't have. So all this was incorporated

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into Christian theology in the Middle Ages, and Saint Thomas

474
00:30:45,319 --> 00:30:50,680
Aquinas Family in the thirteenth century famously based his whole system,

475
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,640
which became the main orthodoxy of the universities and the

476
00:30:54,720 --> 00:31:01,319
Church in Western Europe. He based his whole theory on Aristotle,

477
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,720
and he produced a kind of Christian version of this philosophy.

478
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:10,559
So plants had souls, animals had souls, and humans had

479
00:31:11,119 --> 00:31:14,599
the intellectual soul based on the animal soul, and the

480
00:31:14,599 --> 00:31:18,440
whole universe was alive. For the medieval Christians. The stars

481
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:22,119
were alive, the planets were alive, the Earth was alive.

482
00:31:22,279 --> 00:31:25,559
Mother Earth an animal. It was a living world. It

483
00:31:25,599 --> 00:31:29,240
was kind of Christian animism. And that's the world that

484
00:31:29,359 --> 00:31:33,440
gave rise to the great Gothic cathedrals like Chatra and Lincoln.

485
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:37,839
And they were a product of a worldview that saw

486
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:42,319
all of nature is existing within God and God within nature,

487
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,480
in which animals and plants were all animates and had souls,

488
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:54,720
and that shaped the entire worldview up until the seventeenth century,

489
00:31:55,079 --> 00:32:01,119
the scientific revolution and the scientific revolution with a vision

490
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:05,799
that came to Galileo in sixteen nineteen. He had a dream,

491
00:32:06,039 --> 00:32:09,240
a vision in which he saw the whole universe as

492
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:14,680
a machine. The universe was like as kind of clockwork machine. Actually,

493
00:32:14,759 --> 00:32:18,079
in his version it was not with cogs, but with vortices.

494
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:23,200
It was a more interesting view, and all animals and

495
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,079
plants were nothing but machines. But human beings had a

496
00:32:27,119 --> 00:32:31,960
special soul that was to do with reason. So Basically,

497
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:34,119
he drained the soul out of the whole of nature,

498
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:39,400
or planets and stars all became just dead mechanical matter,

499
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:43,279
and so did human bodies and all animals and plants,

500
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,279
and all that was left was human reason, which was

501
00:32:46,319 --> 00:32:49,880
the only thing that was not material in nature and

502
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,920
that shared a spiritual nature with God and the angels.

503
00:32:53,279 --> 00:32:57,720
But that created the famous Cartesian dualism, the divide between

504
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:00,480
the realm of spirit and the realm of matter. And

505
00:33:00,519 --> 00:33:04,559
the realm of spirit was not material, not in space

506
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:08,240
and time. The world of matter was unconscious and material

507
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:13,039
and in space and time. Then in the nineteenth century,

508
00:33:13,519 --> 00:33:19,240
increasing numbers of atheists and materialists, people who became atheists

509
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,079
because they wanted to attack the Church because it was

510
00:33:22,119 --> 00:33:26,319
allied with reactionary governments in France and Russia and so on,

511
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:30,559
were like in the French Revolution. The French Revolutionaries were

512
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:35,839
deeply anti Christian. During the Reign of Terror. Not only

513
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:39,039
did they turn the cathedral of Notre Dame into a

514
00:33:39,039 --> 00:33:43,200
temple of reason, but their guillotine priests, monks and bishops

515
00:33:43,279 --> 00:33:47,359
on an industrial scale and tried to stamp out Christianity

516
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:51,880
in favor of science and reason and progress. But by

517
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:56,359
the nineteenth century this became part of the standard materialist

518
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,920
intellectual system. The materialists said, well, why do we need

519
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,759
invisible spirit? That God? You can't see God, Angels you

520
00:34:03,799 --> 00:34:06,519
can't see them, the human spirit, it's nothing but a

521
00:34:06,519 --> 00:34:09,159
fantasy of the imagination. You can't measure it, weigh it.

522
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,599
All there is is matter. There's no such thing as spirit.

523
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,639
Everything's matter, and the soul is just the way the

524
00:34:16,679 --> 00:34:20,880
brain works. It's just a subjective experience of the brain.

525
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:23,519
And the brain is nothing but a physical organ inside

526
00:34:23,559 --> 00:34:28,920
a mechanistic body. So that's what happened then, you see,

527
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,440
is that religious people said, oh, well no, it's not

528
00:34:32,559 --> 00:34:34,880
just that there is this other thing. Nature is just

529
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,400
a machine. Nature is just mechanical, just like science says.

530
00:34:38,679 --> 00:34:43,360
But God exists beyond nature, supernatural angels exist beyond nature,

531
00:34:43,679 --> 00:34:47,559
and the human spirit is basically supernatural as well, but

532
00:34:47,639 --> 00:34:50,119
it can't be measured and has nothing to do with science,

533
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:55,119
and so the thing is that the atheist then said, well,

534
00:34:55,159 --> 00:34:57,159
you know, all of this is just make believe and

535
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,480
dogma and stuff and nothing to do with what we

536
00:34:59,519 --> 00:35:02,480
can see and measuring gives real progress in the world,

537
00:35:03,039 --> 00:35:07,119
and they became more and more confident, and the plenty

538
00:35:07,159 --> 00:35:09,199
of them around today. I mean, this is the default

539
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,960
possession of the academic world and the business and the

540
00:35:13,559 --> 00:35:17,480
secular world that we live in. And so the realm

541
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,639
of religion was driven to a kind of margin of

542
00:35:20,119 --> 00:35:25,280
supernatural realm where the soul became at best an idea

543
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:30,199
inside human brains and therefore inside human in the physical

544
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:35,039
activity of the brain. So this just calls us where

545
00:35:35,039 --> 00:35:37,920
we are today. So if we now want to think

546
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:41,440
about the soul, you know what it is. To come

547
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:45,440
back to your question, I would say that what I

548
00:35:45,519 --> 00:35:50,000
call the morphogenetic field, the form shaping field that underlies

549
00:35:50,079 --> 00:35:56,199
the body of plants, animals, microbes, crystals, It's not just

550
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,800
living things. Crystals have morphogenetic fields that shape the growing

551
00:36:01,199 --> 00:36:06,079
Molecules have molecular fields that shape the three dimensional structure

552
00:36:06,079 --> 00:36:11,440
of a protein. For example. Morphogenetic fields are form shaping fields.

553
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:17,000
Morphogenesis means the coming into being a form morphi form genesis,

554
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:21,719
coming into being, so that more or less corresponds to

555
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:26,440
what Aristotle called the vegetative soul, and that these fields

556
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,039
are not just inside the body, they are in and

557
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:33,079
around it, like a magnetic field is not just inside

558
00:36:33,079 --> 00:36:36,679
a magnet, it's in and around the magnet. And so

559
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:39,360
when some people say they can see auros, and it's

560
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:42,480
the soul, and so I can't see auros, so I

561
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:46,320
don't have any personal experience. But I think of the

562
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:50,039
morphogenetic field as being within and around the body, and

563
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,199
that's what shapes the body and maintains its health. And

564
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,840
that's one way of thinking of the soul, but it's

565
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:59,519
only the most basic way, which we share with plants

566
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:04,599
and other animals. Then there's the animal soul, which Aristotle

567
00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:07,679
talked about, which I think is to do with the

568
00:37:07,679 --> 00:37:14,039
fields of behavior and learning. That animals have fields which

569
00:37:14,679 --> 00:37:18,159
organize their movements and their activity of their brains and

570
00:37:18,199 --> 00:37:22,840
their muscles that underlie their instincts. And you know, when

571
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:27,320
a kitten learns, it just or instinctively starts to play

572
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:31,079
and to chase things and to swipe things with its pores.

573
00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:33,880
And when a spider knows how to spin its web

574
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,079
without having to go to Spiner's a spider school, or

575
00:37:37,119 --> 00:37:40,280
get a spider degree or anything, it just does. It

576
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:43,920
even doesn't need to see other spiders. These instincts which

577
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:48,199
are so deeply built into animals. I think a part

578
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:52,199
of the morphic field of their behavior, the fields of

579
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:56,480
behavior that they inherit by morphic resonance from their ancestors.

580
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:00,840
And we also have instinctive fields of behavior. We inherit.

581
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,639
Babies naturally learn to crawl and to walk, and have

582
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:10,039
an instinct to learn language, to pick it up. And

583
00:38:10,079 --> 00:38:15,760
then we have our conscious minds. Most of that is unconscious,

584
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,760
the habits of growth, the habits of our bodies, heartbeat, breathing,

585
00:38:20,159 --> 00:38:25,800
although eyeblink, reflex, all these things are unconscious. Most morphic

586
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:30,239
fields are unconscious. Their habits and habits are unconscious. But

587
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:37,039
our conscious minds are also shaped by habitual fields, mental fields.

588
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,800
You know, we inherit a whole culture with metaphors, language words. No,

589
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,119
you and I didn't make up the English language. We

590
00:38:45,159 --> 00:38:48,000
inherited it with all the concepts and metaphors that are

591
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:51,760
built into it. We inherit a whole culture. Every culture

592
00:38:52,079 --> 00:38:55,880
inherits a culture, and human cultures are different. They obviously

593
00:38:55,920 --> 00:39:00,360
have some overlap, but different languages, different cultures, I think,

594
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:04,079
are inherited by morphic resonance, and they shape our conscious minds.

595
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,679
So then when we come to what is the soul,

596
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,159
I would say it's all these things, but it takes

597
00:39:12,199 --> 00:39:17,960
on a particular relevance in a religious context when we

598
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:22,119
consider to what degree is the soul separable from the body.

599
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,360
In other words, is it possible that the soul could

600
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:30,000
survive the death of the body, which is a primary

601
00:39:30,119 --> 00:39:33,320
religious question. It's one that atheist and material is just

602
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,360
simply deny like that, they say, of course, it's impossible.

603
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,559
It's ridiculous, what a silly idea. They don't even need

604
00:39:40,599 --> 00:39:43,719
to discuss it. It's just a priori They deny it

605
00:39:44,119 --> 00:39:49,039
because everything's material, and whatever survives the body is not material,

606
00:39:49,079 --> 00:39:52,639
because you don't see anything material leaving the body that's

607
00:39:52,679 --> 00:39:57,239
shaped like a soul or anything. So I think that

608
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:02,679
we actually experience an aspect of our soul every night

609
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:06,400
in our dreams, because when you and I dream, we

610
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:11,039
have a body in our dreams, the dream body. When

611
00:40:11,079 --> 00:40:14,519
I'm dreaming, my physical body is lying asleep in bed,

612
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,199
but my dream body is going around, talking to people,

613
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:23,119
meeting people, running, walking, sometimes even flying.

614
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,

615
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,679
and now back to the show.

616
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 2: And doing all sorts of things. And that body in

617
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,719
my dreams. I'm not spending my whole time looking down

618
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,559
to see if I've got a body. But it's implicit

619
00:40:44,679 --> 00:40:48,039
because I have a center of consciousness. I'm moving around

620
00:40:48,119 --> 00:40:50,440
in my dreams and seeing things from a point of

621
00:40:50,519 --> 00:40:55,440
view in that dream world. Now what is that dream body? Well,

622
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,719
you know, materialism doesn't have much to say on the subject.

623
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:00,960
It just says, well, it must be an illusion produced

624
00:41:01,039 --> 00:41:04,239
inside the brain. But that doesn't really tell us why

625
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:07,079
it should produce this kind of illusion, why the illusion

626
00:41:07,119 --> 00:41:09,360
should take the form it does, why it should be

627
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,000
body like, why we should have the dreams we do.

628
00:41:12,199 --> 00:41:16,039
None of that's explained anyway. So the dream body we

629
00:41:16,119 --> 00:41:18,559
have every night in our dreams. We don't remember all

630
00:41:18,599 --> 00:41:22,039
our dreams, We forget most of them, but we know

631
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,519
remember enough to know that we have a dream body.

632
00:41:24,559 --> 00:41:27,039
And I know I've had a dream body ever since

633
00:41:27,079 --> 00:41:29,320
I was a child, because when I was a child,

634
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,519
I had wonderful flying dreams. Very rarely have them, no,

635
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:36,360
But I've found dreams quite thrilling when I could fly,

636
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:40,000
and sometimes they're very scary. We have nightmares and so on.

637
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:45,440
So when people say, well, could there be something that

638
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:50,039
lives on after we die? I think the best bet

639
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:53,920
for me the easiest way of conceiving of this is

640
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,960
to think that when we die, we can go on dreaming,

641
00:41:57,519 --> 00:41:59,800
but we can't any longer wake up because we haven't

642
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:02,880
got physical body to wake up in it's dead. So

643
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:07,679
we're trapped in a dream world when we're dead. And

644
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:10,400
the kind of dream world we're trapped in depends on

645
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,079
what kind of person we are and what we believe

646
00:42:13,199 --> 00:42:16,400
and what we expect, and what our theories are and

647
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:20,519
what our memories are. You know, if you're an atheist

648
00:42:20,559 --> 00:42:22,760
and you believe that everything goes blank when you die,

649
00:42:23,199 --> 00:42:28,599
perhaps it will if you're a you know, if you

650
00:42:28,679 --> 00:42:31,119
believe in If you're a Tibetan Buddhist and you think

651
00:42:31,119 --> 00:42:34,320
you're going to a bardo, a kind of intermediate realm

652
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:38,280
dream like, the Tibetan Buddhists think of it as dream like,

653
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:43,119
and that's why Tibetan monks practice what they call dream Yogo,

654
00:42:43,159 --> 00:42:47,920
which is lucid dreaming, learning to practice being aware during

655
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:50,559
your dreams, because they think this will help them in

656
00:42:50,599 --> 00:42:55,400
the afterlife in the bardo. They see it as a

657
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:57,639
you're better off with a lucid dream where you know

658
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:00,719
what you're doing than with a confused dream where you're

659
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,159
just assaulted by all sorts of images and events and

660
00:43:04,199 --> 00:43:07,639
things that you're just tossed by the turmoil of this

661
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:14,239
dream world out of control. They practice. And then in

662
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:17,840
the Tibetan view and in the Hindu view, after a

663
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,159
certain time in an intermediate dream like state, then your

664
00:43:21,559 --> 00:43:25,519
most people would be reincarnated. The whole aim of Hinduing

665
00:43:25,519 --> 00:43:29,719
Buddhist spirituality is not to be reincarnated. It's to get

666
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:34,320
off the whole wheel of reincarnation, because you know, life

667
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:40,519
is available suffering according to the Buddha. So most Western

668
00:43:40,639 --> 00:43:43,960
enthusiasts for reincarnation think is a good thing. But you know,

669
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:46,559
I've lived in India among people who take it for granted.

670
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,480
They think is a bad thing. They don't they're not

671
00:43:49,679 --> 00:43:54,440
delighted by the idea of reincarnation, you know, they're rather

672
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:56,320
put off by it. I mean, the whole point of

673
00:43:56,639 --> 00:44:01,760
Hindu spiritual practice is mockshire, is liberation from the wheels

674
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:06,159
of reincarnation. And so the aim of most Hindu spirituality

675
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:10,079
is a kind of vertical takeoff where you can just

676
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:15,760
leave this endless cycles of life behind. So I think

677
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:20,280
that the and a Christian view with one Christian view

678
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:23,119
would be that we have a dream like after life

679
00:44:23,159 --> 00:44:29,320
in purgatory and that this is like a continued ongoing development.

680
00:44:30,519 --> 00:44:33,199
Some Christian views are that you go to sleep when

681
00:44:33,199 --> 00:44:36,079
you die, and you stay asleep till you're woken up

682
00:44:36,119 --> 00:44:38,320
by the last trump and then you have the last

683
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,800
judgment with no continued development. You know, there's a variety

684
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:43,480
of theories.

685
00:44:44,679 --> 00:44:48,079
Speaker 1: What do you because we're talking about the afterlife and

686
00:44:48,119 --> 00:44:51,079
the other side in purgatory. In these things, I've had

687
00:44:51,079 --> 00:44:54,039
the pleasure of probably speaking to at least one hundred

688
00:44:54,079 --> 00:44:58,960
and fifty different near death experiencers from various backgrounds, from

689
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:03,159
a Harvard neuroscientists all the way to a drug addict

690
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:07,440
and everything in between. But what they see on the

691
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:10,719
other side is shaped a lot of times, it's shaped

692
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:14,400
by what they believe, meaning that if I've had only

693
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,400
a few that've had hellish experiences, most of them are

694
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:22,119
overwhelmingly positive, very loving. I'm sure you've heard all the

695
00:45:22,159 --> 00:45:25,199
things that happen on the other side meant, but the

696
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,119
ones that have hellish experiences is because Daveman, when they

697
00:45:28,199 --> 00:45:30,559
came back to said I went through it because I

698
00:45:30,599 --> 00:45:32,559
was raised Catholic, and I believe that I didn't do

699
00:45:32,639 --> 00:45:34,800
good and I had to go through I had to

700
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,960
go to hell. But in that hellish experience, the second

701
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:40,840
they ask for help, an angel or Jesus or some

702
00:45:41,079 --> 00:45:44,440
or a light comes in and rescues them. What is

703
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,320
your take on the whole near death experience phenomenon, which

704
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:51,079
has now been documented tens, if not hundreds of thousands

705
00:45:51,159 --> 00:45:55,679
of times, and has been studied intensely, and is becoming

706
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:59,079
more and more people are becoming much more aware of it.

707
00:45:59,119 --> 00:46:02,519
From the ninth seventies when doctor Raymond Moody coined the

708
00:46:02,559 --> 00:46:06,679
phrase near death experience. Now it's part of our zeitgeist.

709
00:46:07,599 --> 00:46:09,840
You don't go towards the light, you know, that kind

710
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:11,639
of thing. What is your take on it?

711
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,119
Speaker 2: Well, I think that the fact that so many people

712
00:46:15,119 --> 00:46:17,760
have had them and they have such similar components shows

713
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,280
this is something very common, really happens and probably does

714
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,800
happen when we're dying. I mean, of course, by definition,

715
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:28,199
all near death experiences were not a people who actually

716
00:46:28,559 --> 00:46:31,440
stayed dead. There are people who went through a kind

717
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:35,320
of dying process and came back, so they may tell

718
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,679
us something about the first moments of death, but they

719
00:46:38,679 --> 00:46:41,519
don't necessarily tell us what happens you know, now later

720
00:46:41,679 --> 00:46:44,039
or a day later, or a year later or ten

721
00:46:44,119 --> 00:46:47,039
years later. They give us a taste of the first

722
00:46:47,039 --> 00:46:53,760
stages so well. First of all, the idea that you

723
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,320
float out of your body and you see yourself from

724
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,920
above is very similar to out of the body experience,

725
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:04,039
and out of the body experiences are things that many

726
00:47:04,079 --> 00:47:08,599
people can have almost on demand. You know, some people,

727
00:47:08,639 --> 00:47:12,079
they happen rarely, but some people can actually do it

728
00:47:12,119 --> 00:47:16,360
on purpose, to deliberately travel out of their body. And

729
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,719
out of the body experiences are very similar to lucid dreams,

730
00:47:20,119 --> 00:47:23,360
which is where I've already talked about how in your

731
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,960
dream you have another body, and in lucid dreams you

732
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:28,880
can go where you like and do what you will

733
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,960
because you realize you're dreaming. It puts you in control

734
00:47:33,079 --> 00:47:37,280
to some degree. So I think the floating out of

735
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,840
the body and seeing yourself from outside is on a

736
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:44,800
continuum with near death experiences and out of the body

737
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:50,920
experiences and lud and lucid dreams the same kind of thing.

738
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,159
And I think the body you're floating out with is

739
00:47:54,199 --> 00:47:56,280
the same kind of thing as your dream body that

740
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,360
you experience in your dreams every night, So it's not

741
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,079
as if something totally new happens that you find yourself

742
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,039
seeing things from a different point of view from your

743
00:48:06,079 --> 00:48:08,679
physical body. It's something that happens to us every night

744
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:13,719
in our dreams. But in this case, you then you

745
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:17,159
are actually that people often see what's happening in operating

746
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:22,360
theater or in an accident scene or something. Then they

747
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,519
go through a kind of tunnel often and then they

748
00:48:25,639 --> 00:48:29,199
enter a realm of lights and joy and with luminous beings.

749
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:33,840
So it's a very common kind of description. Well, I

750
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,679
think there are a couple of ways of thinking about that.

751
00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:41,000
One is a kind of psychological way, which you probably

752
00:48:41,039 --> 00:48:46,760
know the theory of stan Graf on this you probably discuss.

753
00:48:47,079 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: I know Stang very well. I know it's worked very well.

754
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, you know that he found a lot of

755
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,360
people when he was doing his LSD research. A lot

756
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,920
of people on LSD trips had the experience of going

757
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:01,519
through a tunnel coming into the light, very like a

758
00:49:01,599 --> 00:49:04,719
near death experience. And many people on DMT or other

759
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,559
psychedelics have things very similar to a near death experience.

760
00:49:10,079 --> 00:49:14,800
And Standargraft's argument, as you know, is that at one level,

761
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,480
this is an archetype, and it's like being born again.

762
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:24,199
And you know, in the birth process, if we're born

763
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,400
in normal vaginal birth, we're in the womb, it gets

764
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:31,920
pretty hellish. It's contractions, it's dark, we feel unwelcome. It's

765
00:49:32,119 --> 00:49:36,519
really horrible. After floating blissfully and amniotic fluid for nine months,

766
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:43,360
suddenly it turns hostile and you don't want to be

767
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,800
there anymore. And it's sort of really horrible being squashed

768
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,440
all the time by all these contractions. And then a

769
00:49:50,519 --> 00:49:55,320
tube presents itself. You go through the tube, you emerge

770
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:59,880
through this dark tube into the light, and everything's completely different. Well,

771
00:50:00,639 --> 00:50:04,800
that's being born. And his argument that these near death

772
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:08,800
experiences as a like rebirth or an archetype of being

773
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:12,679
born again, seems to me very plausible.

774
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:17,960
Speaker 1: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,

775
00:50:21,559 --> 00:50:23,480
and now back to the show.

776
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 2: In this connection, I myself think that this archetype of

777
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:38,000
rebirth is very deeply embedded in our religious traditions, particularly

778
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:42,400
the Christian tradition, because the central feature of that is

779
00:50:42,519 --> 00:50:46,960
John the Baptist who baptized Jesus, and Jesus' first experience

780
00:50:47,039 --> 00:50:50,400
of himself as a son of God. The sign of

781
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:54,559
God was at his baptism, he had a voice from

782
00:50:54,599 --> 00:50:57,000
heaven said, this is my beloved son, in whom I

783
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:00,639
am well pleased. He had this blissful experience as he

784
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,920
came up out of the water. Well, my theory is

785
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,760
probably one you discussed on the program before, because other

786
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:11,039
people say this too, is that John the Baptist was

787
00:51:11,159 --> 00:51:15,119
essentially a drowner, and that he was holding people under

788
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:18,599
total immersion in the River Jordan just long enough to

789
00:51:18,639 --> 00:51:22,800
induce the near death experience by drowning. And if he

790
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:27,039
did that, then what they'd experience is they passed life

791
00:51:27,039 --> 00:51:30,639
flashing before them, going through a tunnel, coming out into

792
00:51:30,679 --> 00:51:33,840
the light, having a near death experience, being enlightened, joy

793
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:38,400
then coming back and saying they'd died, they'd seen the

794
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:43,599
light and they'd been born again. And that experience which

795
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:47,280
Jesus had, I think the early Christians were having. And

796
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:51,840
people who've had near death experiences often lose the fear

797
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:55,280
of death and become more spiritual. People who were baptized

798
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:57,920
in the early Church lost the fear of death and

799
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:02,559
became more spiritual. And when at the time of the

800
00:52:02,559 --> 00:52:07,079
Reformation in the sixteenth century, The most radical Protestant group

801
00:52:07,119 --> 00:52:11,679
were the Anabaptists, who went around saying the Bible doesn't

802
00:52:11,679 --> 00:52:15,320
say you should baptize infants by sprinkling water over them.

803
00:52:15,559 --> 00:52:18,440
It says you should be baptized by total immersion, like

804
00:52:18,519 --> 00:52:23,719
Jesus was, and like John the Baptist, they reinstated baptism

805
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:27,239
by total immersion. It became their signature thing, and that's

806
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:31,559
still the signature theme of Baptists, Mennonites, and all other

807
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:38,480
Anabaptist derived forms of Christianity. And their key thing is

808
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:42,840
the conversion experience, where you die, you see the light,

809
00:52:43,119 --> 00:52:46,480
and you're born again. It makes total sense, you see,

810
00:52:47,119 --> 00:52:51,480
of the Baptist message. If the early Baptists were indeed

811
00:52:51,519 --> 00:52:56,039
inducing near death experiences, and maybe some of them still do,

812
00:52:56,159 --> 00:52:58,800
but they'd probably be a bit more careful now because

813
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:02,719
we live in an age of litterleation and health and safety,

814
00:53:04,039 --> 00:53:06,719
and John the Baptist didn't have to contend with that.

815
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:08,559
You know, you might have lost a few.

816
00:53:08,679 --> 00:53:14,679
Speaker 1: But so that's very true, that's very very true.

817
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:19,360
Speaker 2: So I think that these the reason for Jesus' is

818
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:21,760
that it's the first spiritual experience we hear about, and

819
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,519
it was followed immediately by him going into the wilderness

820
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:28,119
on his vision quest for forty days and forty nights,

821
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:32,639
which we celebrate in the season of Lent. But the

822
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:38,719
key thing there was this experience of something beyond death,

823
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:41,880
going through death, and then having to come back. And

824
00:53:42,519 --> 00:53:47,360
so I think that near death experiences are very important

825
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,119
because they're a kind of right of passage. They give

826
00:53:50,199 --> 00:53:55,039
us a view of a world beyond this physical body

827
00:53:55,079 --> 00:53:58,039
and beyond death, which we can experience in another kind

828
00:53:58,039 --> 00:54:02,960
of body. And most people who've had them have a

829
00:54:03,079 --> 00:54:06,559
very different view to dying from people who haven't had them,

830
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:10,039
And so I think they're very important as a right

831
00:54:10,119 --> 00:54:14,559
of passage, and because they actually change the way we

832
00:54:14,599 --> 00:54:18,480
see things. And our culture lacks rights of passage, as

833
00:54:18,519 --> 00:54:21,719
many people have pointed out, and I think that's why

834
00:54:22,079 --> 00:54:25,800
for so many people, taking psychedelics has become a kind

835
00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:30,400
of right of passage, often very done under very unsuitable

836
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:36,840
conditions and chaotic surroundings and stuff, but done properly, I

837
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,000
think can serve that kind of role in our culture,

838
00:54:41,599 --> 00:54:45,039
as in the same kind of near death experience. And

839
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:49,320
of course, if baptism could be reinstated as a right

840
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,280
of passage which doesn't involve any drugs at all, but

841
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:57,360
involves nothing more than water. There's plenty of that around pools, lakes, rivers.

842
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:03,239
It was virtually free, life transforming, free, available on demand.

843
00:55:03,559 --> 00:55:05,480
You know, John the Baptist was doing it on an

844
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:08,320
industrial scale. People I'm sure were lining up on the

845
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:11,159
bank of the Jordan. Put one under, hold them under

846
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:14,639
just long enough. Then there'd probably be support workers, you know,

847
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:19,519
to help resuscitate them, probably next please, and you could

848
00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:22,960
this could be done on an industrial scale. And again,

849
00:55:23,119 --> 00:55:26,320
and if I were in a Baptist church, which I'm not,

850
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,480
but if I were, I think i'd really try and

851
00:55:30,199 --> 00:55:33,239
get things moving in terms of you'd probably have to

852
00:55:33,239 --> 00:55:38,079
do it with heart monitors and sort of medical equipment

853
00:55:38,199 --> 00:55:42,280
and stuff, water proof ECGs and stuff to be able

854
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:44,760
to do it in a way that could be deemed safe.

855
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:49,000
But they could reinstate this. I think they'd have plenty

856
00:55:49,039 --> 00:55:52,440
of people queuing up to become Baptists or people from

857
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:56,239
other question denominations going to the Baptists for this right

858
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:58,840
of passage, then going back to their regular.

859
00:55:58,639 --> 00:56:04,960
Speaker 1: Practice scales program. Of course, Rubert, I have to ask you,

860
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:07,960
with all the experience you have and all the research

861
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,960
you've done over the years, and you're just your own

862
00:56:12,039 --> 00:56:16,800
personal point of view. What is your vision for humanity

863
00:56:17,159 --> 00:56:19,239
humanity's future? Where do you think are we on the

864
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:23,199
verge of higher consciousness? There seems to be an awakening

865
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:25,880
happening spiritually with a lot of people. Hence, why are

866
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:28,360
a lot of these systems around us are starting to

867
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:31,280
crumble and crack around us? Things that have been rock

868
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:34,760
solid for hundreds of years that are now starting to crack.

869
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:37,320
I come from the world of Hollywood, in that kind

870
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:40,559
of world, that whole system is just falling apart in

871
00:56:40,599 --> 00:56:43,599
a way that it's unprecedented, and so many other industries

872
00:56:43,639 --> 00:56:46,159
are doing the same thing. But where do you see

873
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:49,159
humanity in this future? Are we going to go to

874
00:56:49,159 --> 00:56:54,280
a higher consciousness civilization or are we just going to boom?

875
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:57,280
That was technical by the way.

876
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:03,320
Speaker 2: You know, of course I don't know. It's obvious that

877
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,119
a lot of things are cracking up. And you know,

878
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:10,159
if fire systems break down, you know, if suddenly our

879
00:57:10,199 --> 00:57:14,079
water supply doesn't work, electricity supply doesn't work, the Internet's

880
00:57:14,159 --> 00:57:19,480
crashed because of sabotage from opposing world powers, and that

881
00:57:19,559 --> 00:57:22,280
kind of thing. I'm not sure that most people would

882
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:25,760
go to higher consciousness in those conditions. I think go

883
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:29,760
to lower consciousness. You know, I think sort of share

884
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:33,039
survivalism would kick in for a lot of people, and

885
00:57:33,239 --> 00:57:35,639
you know, being nice to other people that seem like

886
00:57:35,679 --> 00:57:39,519
a needless luxury, you know, when it's pure survival that's

887
00:57:39,559 --> 00:57:43,519
at stake. And you know, when we look at the

888
00:57:43,559 --> 00:57:51,280
world political scene, it doesn't show many manifestations of higher consciousness,

889
00:57:52,119 --> 00:57:55,559
or the world's business scene for that matter. You know,

890
00:57:55,599 --> 00:58:00,519
it's about profit and corporate profit and that's not higher sciousness.

891
00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:06,599
That's us greed. So I think it's possible that the

892
00:58:08,199 --> 00:58:11,119
fact more people are coming to be disillusion with the

893
00:58:11,519 --> 00:58:17,679
mechanistic materialists worldview and the kind of social and economic

894
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:22,400
systems that have grown out of late stage capitalism, you know,

895
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,519
a lot of people would like alternatives. It's not obvious

896
00:58:25,559 --> 00:58:29,119
that there are that many alternatives politically and economically at

897
00:58:29,119 --> 00:58:34,280
the moment. But I think one thing that will change is,

898
00:58:35,159 --> 00:58:39,079
you know, as we come out of the dogmatic materialist

899
00:58:39,159 --> 00:58:43,320
secularism that's dominated at least the life of educated people

900
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:48,880
in so called advanced countries, I think more people will

901
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:52,000
open up to the spiritual dimension that's been denied by

902
00:58:52,039 --> 00:58:58,320
that system. And so I think of spiritual revival is

903
00:58:58,519 --> 00:59:04,760
actually happening and is very welcome. And you know, it

904
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:07,239
starts from a pretty low base here in Europe. I mean,

905
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:10,280
Europe's much more godless and non spiritual than the US.

906
00:59:11,159 --> 00:59:13,199
For all his faults, the US is a much more

907
00:59:13,239 --> 00:59:16,480
spiritual place than most of the rest of other Western

908
00:59:16,519 --> 00:59:25,400
countries like Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Europe. So I

909
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:31,000
think that if that can happen, I think that it could.

910
00:59:31,639 --> 00:59:35,000
It may not be happened soon enough for but it

911
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:39,800
could lead to a different way of setting goals. Right now,

912
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:43,960
all governments want economic growth, because everybody who votes for them,

913
00:59:44,039 --> 00:59:46,480
or almost everyone who votes from wants more money and

914
00:59:46,519 --> 00:59:49,960
more stuff all the time, and more disposable income and

915
00:59:50,559 --> 00:59:53,480
bigger houses and more foreign holidays and all those kinds

916
00:59:53,519 --> 00:59:58,360
of things, all of which if more people were spiritually minded,

917
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,800
more people probably can with what they've got and be

918
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:04,880
prepared to live more simply.

919
01:00:05,239 --> 01:00:07,760
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,

920
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:13,320
and now back to the show.

921
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 2: Because if you feel happier and more satisfied with your life,

922
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:23,559
just grateful for being alive and beautiful things around one,

923
01:00:23,679 --> 01:00:27,400
and plants and animals and other people everyday acts of

924
01:00:27,519 --> 01:00:34,599
kindness that we all encounter. If one's grateful for those

925
01:00:34,679 --> 01:00:39,000
kinds of things, doesn't feel such a pressing need to

926
01:00:39,039 --> 01:00:41,480
spend the whole time whizzing around the world in jet

927
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:46,519
planes or buying new products, or watching advertising channels or

928
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:53,480
infomercials and stuff. It could have knock on effects for

929
01:00:53,519 --> 01:00:56,599
the economy, but there's not much sign of that happening yet.

930
01:00:56,679 --> 01:01:00,320
I have to say, I hope it will. I hope

931
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,559
it will probably have to happen through necessity, and I

932
01:01:03,599 --> 01:01:08,039
hope because economic growth is faltering. It's you know, in

933
01:01:08,119 --> 01:01:11,880
most so called advanced countries, you know, people are happy

934
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:14,840
with a zero point five percent growth rate. Here in Britain,

935
01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:16,840
you know, the argument is could it be a zero

936
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:21,840
point two percent or zero point five percent? And even

937
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:24,480
China where and India where they're used to these high

938
01:01:24,559 --> 01:01:28,119
growth rates, will reach a point where that stops happening,

939
01:01:28,719 --> 01:01:31,559
as it has in Japan, which was a bit ahead

940
01:01:31,559 --> 01:01:34,679
of the curve of valeration countries. So when we reach

941
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:38,920
the point where not because idealists say we shouldn't consume

942
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:42,159
so much and the economy should slow down. It's slowing

943
01:01:42,199 --> 01:01:45,639
down anyway, and we're going to be able to consume less.

944
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:48,840
We'll have to consume less simply because when as rich

945
01:01:48,880 --> 01:01:51,480
as we were in economies aren't expanding as they were.

946
01:01:52,679 --> 01:01:54,840
Hopefully this will go in hand in hand with a

947
01:01:54,880 --> 01:02:00,880
spiritual transition and won't necessarily lead to mass miss if

948
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,760
we have less. If we have enough and we have

949
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:08,519
a spiritual life, then we can be really happy. If

950
01:02:08,519 --> 01:02:12,239
we have no spiritual life, then nothing is going to

951
01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:16,679
satisfy us, no amount of material possessions or greed or money.

952
01:02:17,119 --> 01:02:21,639
You know, if you've got twenty billion, if you're unsatisfied

953
01:02:21,719 --> 01:02:25,000
with that, you want forty billion, and then you want

954
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:27,360
a trillion. And there's a few people who are actually

955
01:02:27,400 --> 01:02:30,559
aspiring to have a trillion dollar. You can't possibly spend

956
01:02:30,559 --> 01:02:36,679
that kind of money, so it's insane anyway. That's those

957
01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:40,639
rambling versions of my take on the future.

958
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:46,119
Speaker 1: The experiments or the findings you had about dogs knowing

959
01:02:46,159 --> 01:02:49,960
when their owners were coming home. I am fascinated with

960
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:52,760
that because I had a dog, I have cats now,

961
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:55,760
and when I saw I've seen some videos of it.

962
01:02:55,800 --> 01:02:57,800
I think somewhere in a news article I saw a

963
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:01,360
news program. I saw like they the dog and then

964
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:04,760
they filmed the owner and the second he got into

965
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:07,840
his car and started to drive home, the dog got

966
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:10,199
up and waited for them at the door. What are

967
01:03:10,239 --> 01:03:14,000
your findings with that, because it's fascinating. What do you

968
01:03:14,039 --> 01:03:17,760
believe the connection is? Because now we're talking about inner species,

969
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:20,320
We're not talking abut the morphic field of humans and

970
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:24,599
the morphic resonance of dogs. These are two separate species,

971
01:03:24,639 --> 01:03:26,719
if you will, but yet connected. I'd love to hear

972
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:27,480
your thoughts on it.

973
01:03:27,639 --> 01:03:30,440
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of research on telepathy, which is

974
01:03:30,639 --> 01:03:36,719
the connection between people or animals who are closely bonded. Telepathy,

975
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:40,440
interestingly happens when people are part of a social group

976
01:03:41,039 --> 01:03:43,920
share a morphic field. I think social groups have morphic

977
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:48,840
fields and telepathy. Typically it doesn't occur with strangers. It

978
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:54,960
happens between husbands and wives, lovers, parents and children, especially

979
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:59,400
mothers and babies. It's very common in the human world

980
01:03:59,639 --> 01:04:02,320
with telephone calls. I've done a lot of research on

981
01:04:02,360 --> 01:04:06,880
telephone telepathy. But it also happens when we're bonded to

982
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:10,920
animals and they're bonded to us, and so one reason

983
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:15,719
I started this research with dogs was because I first

984
01:04:15,719 --> 01:04:20,480
got interested in telepathy through a spectacular case in Cambridge

985
01:04:20,599 --> 01:04:23,880
when I was doing research there of an autistic child

986
01:04:23,920 --> 01:04:29,239
who was highly telepathic with his mother, similar to these

987
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:34,719
recent cases on the telepathy tapes I go. Years later,

988
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:38,559
when I got back from India and I was working,

989
01:04:39,039 --> 01:04:42,280
I was doing various other research projects on morphic resonance.

990
01:04:43,079 --> 01:04:45,960
I got interested in returning to telepathy, and I couldn't

991
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:49,679
work with autistic children because I'm not a child psychiatrist,

992
01:04:49,760 --> 01:04:54,000
and so I thought the next best thing would be dogs,

993
01:04:54,639 --> 01:04:58,960
because like autistic children on speaking autistic children, they don't speak,

994
01:04:59,239 --> 01:05:04,000
which inhibit telepathy I think to some degree, and they

995
01:05:04,039 --> 01:05:09,199
haven't had a college education, which makes them think telefty

996
01:05:09,239 --> 01:05:12,960
doesn't exist. Dogs, you know, can just come at this naturally,

997
01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:16,440
and they haven't been put off it by smart guys

998
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:18,920
who say it's an illusion and so on. I thought

999
01:05:18,960 --> 01:05:21,800
dogs would be ideal, and I heard so many cases

1000
01:05:22,239 --> 01:05:25,119
of this that I did quite a lot of experimental

1001
01:05:25,159 --> 01:05:28,920
research along the lines you suggest. You know, we filmed

1002
01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:31,599
the dog the whole time the person's out, have the

1003
01:05:31,639 --> 01:05:35,199
person go at least five miles away and come back

1004
01:05:35,239 --> 01:05:37,920
at a random time. We select they don't know in

1005
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:41,599
advance when they're going to come home, call them up

1006
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:45,480
on a mobile phone, and to avoid familiar car sounds,

1007
01:05:45,519 --> 01:05:48,320
they come in an unfamiliar vehicle or a taxi, a

1008
01:05:48,320 --> 01:05:52,719
different taxi each time. And the film then shows that

1009
01:05:53,239 --> 01:05:55,519
you know when they form the intention to go home,

1010
01:05:55,559 --> 01:05:59,679
before they've even got into the vehicle, the dog becomes

1011
01:05:59,679 --> 01:06:02,119
a LW and goes and starts waiting from the door

1012
01:06:02,239 --> 01:06:05,159
or window. And the other thing is you can do

1013
01:06:05,199 --> 01:06:09,599
this over and over again. In human telefty tests, when

1014
01:06:09,639 --> 01:06:13,039
you keep repeating them, most people get bored and the

1015
01:06:13,079 --> 01:06:16,719
scores fall off of time because you know the subject

1016
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:20,199
is just bored of doing these repetitive tests. But dogs

1017
01:06:20,239 --> 01:06:22,880
never get bored of their owners coming home, So you

1018
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:26,159
can do this over and over again. Anyway, I published

1019
01:06:26,159 --> 01:06:28,719
papers on this in peer reviewed journals. They're all on

1020
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:33,760
my website childrake dot org and anyone who's interested can

1021
01:06:33,800 --> 01:06:36,440
look there. And also a film of one of these

1022
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:39,119
experiments with a split screen where you can see the

1023
01:06:39,159 --> 01:06:42,400
dog and the owner at the same time. That's also

1024
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:48,880
on my website childrake dot org. And so this I

1025
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:53,400
think it's very clear that as really happens. What I'm

1026
01:06:53,639 --> 01:06:57,639
planning as a new phase of this research. I'm going

1027
01:06:57,639 --> 01:07:00,079
to do it with cats, because cats do it as

1028
01:07:00,079 --> 01:07:03,840
well as dogs. About fifty percent of dogs do it,

1029
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:07,519
according to random surveys of dog owners, and about thirty

1030
01:07:07,559 --> 01:07:10,480
percent of cats. And I don't think it's cats are

1031
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:12,840
less sensitive. I think a lot of them are just

1032
01:07:13,119 --> 01:07:18,280
less interested. I'm afraid that was the case with my

1033
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:23,199
own cats. We had cats, But you know, when I

1034
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:25,920
arrive home, even if I've been away on the long

1035
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:29,239
journey and I walk in, it barely lifts its head

1036
01:07:29,400 --> 01:07:34,559
in acknowledgement. So I've been sadly disappointed with my own cats.

1037
01:07:34,960 --> 01:07:38,599
But some people have cats that are really excited when

1038
01:07:38,599 --> 01:07:42,440
they come home. And I'm planning a new phase of

1039
01:07:42,480 --> 01:07:48,159
research on this with cats. And nowadays, when I first

1040
01:07:48,199 --> 01:07:50,480
did this research, you know, I had to use old

1041
01:07:50,519 --> 01:07:54,199
style video cameras with film. But now there's all these

1042
01:07:54,239 --> 01:07:56,840
pet tracking things you can put on animals. You can

1043
01:07:57,159 --> 01:08:01,320
track them the technology and webcams and things are also

1044
01:08:01,440 --> 01:08:05,519
on smartphones. The technology is so much better. It should

1045
01:08:05,559 --> 01:08:07,960
be possible to do this in a whole new way.

1046
01:08:08,079 --> 01:08:12,639
And I'm shortly having a new research assistant start work

1047
01:08:12,719 --> 01:08:15,960
with me, and we're going to launch a program on cats.

1048
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:19,039
So if anyone watching this has a cat that regularly

1049
01:08:19,079 --> 01:08:23,039
knows when they're coming home and would like to take

1050
01:08:23,079 --> 01:08:25,479
part in this research, get in touch with me through

1051
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:28,039
my website where there's a contact address.

1052
01:08:28,680 --> 01:08:31,399
Speaker 1: Rupert. It's been so fascinating talking to you, and I

1053
01:08:31,880 --> 01:08:33,720
could talk to you for days and days and days,

1054
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:35,399
but I know you're a very very busy man. You

1055
01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:37,239
have this cat research you have to go do, so

1056
01:08:37,319 --> 01:08:42,039
I completely understand. My final question to you is is

1057
01:08:42,079 --> 01:08:45,680
there anything that you feel that humanity needs to hear

1058
01:08:45,760 --> 01:08:47,840
right now? What is the message that you would like

1059
01:08:47,920 --> 01:08:51,520
to give out to humanity for our for the sake

1060
01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:54,039
of our own future. What would you like to say?

1061
01:08:54,800 --> 01:08:57,760
Speaker 2: I think we have to connect with the spiritual world

1062
01:08:58,279 --> 01:09:03,079
that and pray as well for guidance in what we're doing,

1063
01:09:03,119 --> 01:09:06,199
because I don't think we're completely in charge of what happens.

1064
01:09:06,199 --> 01:09:10,760
We're at the mercy of all sorts of you know, cyclones, hurricanes,

1065
01:09:11,439 --> 01:09:14,079
solar flares, there's all sorts of things that affect our

1066
01:09:14,119 --> 01:09:18,079
lives over which we have no control, including a lot

1067
01:09:18,079 --> 01:09:21,239
of modern politics. I mean, even in democracies, you don't

1068
01:09:21,239 --> 01:09:24,239
feel you've got that much control over what governments are doing.

1069
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:29,439
So we're shaped by all sorts of forces that can

1070
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:31,800
go one way or another, that can make on the

1071
01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:35,000
whole the lives of ourselves, our families, and our communities

1072
01:09:35,039 --> 01:09:38,520
better or worse, and obviously the things that make them

1073
01:09:38,560 --> 01:09:44,399
worst of all the wars. And I think too, we

1074
01:09:44,439 --> 01:09:49,000
can do a certain amount through normal rational means, you know, voting, thinking,

1075
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:52,920
you know, discussing, coming up with rational plans and all that.

1076
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:57,079
But I think we need to pray and ask for

1077
01:09:57,359 --> 01:10:00,520
God's help and guidance in what's happening in our own

1078
01:10:00,560 --> 01:10:04,079
lives and in our collective lives. I think prayer is

1079
01:10:04,119 --> 01:10:10,119
one thing.

1080
01:10:07,560 --> 01:10:10,039
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor

1081
01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:15,600
and now back to the show.

1082
01:10:17,319 --> 01:10:23,399
Speaker 2: And I think that becoming aware of that spiritual dimension

1083
01:10:23,479 --> 01:10:26,840
which is so important for our own health and happiness.

1084
01:10:27,600 --> 01:10:31,119
My two most recent books, Science and Spiritual Practices and

1085
01:10:31,199 --> 01:10:33,960
Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work, are about

1086
01:10:34,119 --> 01:10:38,960
scientific evidence that spiritual practices have measurable effects, and the

1087
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:42,760
most measurable effects they have, but in the broadest sense,

1088
01:10:43,039 --> 01:10:47,079
they make people happier, healthier, and live longer, which means

1089
01:10:47,199 --> 01:10:51,319
if you don't have spiritual practices or religious practices, you'll

1090
01:10:51,359 --> 01:10:57,880
be unhappier, unhealthier, and live shorter on average. So that's

1091
01:10:57,920 --> 01:11:00,800
why I think militant atheism should come with health warning.

1092
01:11:02,359 --> 01:11:06,880
I think so. I think that finding the more spiritual

1093
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:12,079
dimension of our own lives is really important. And it's

1094
01:11:12,119 --> 01:11:14,600
one thing to be spiritual but not religious, and I

1095
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:19,359
know many people are, but I think it's helpful to

1096
01:11:19,399 --> 01:11:25,319
be spiritual and religious because reconnecting with a religious tradition,

1097
01:11:25,520 --> 01:11:28,600
tradition links in with other people as where it's not

1098
01:11:28,720 --> 01:11:32,960
just an individual path. We need to have a collective

1099
01:11:33,359 --> 01:11:36,720
sense of what's happening, in a collective sense of we're

1100
01:11:36,720 --> 01:11:40,680
in this together. And I think that religions can help

1101
01:11:40,720 --> 01:11:44,039
with that. They can also be divisive, of course, but

1102
01:11:44,720 --> 01:11:47,640
I think if they're understood properly, they can be helpful.

1103
01:11:48,199 --> 01:11:53,600
And one aspect of them is connecting with our ancestors

1104
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:57,359
and honoring our ancestors. I mean, everyone knows about Halloween,

1105
01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:02,000
but not everyone realizes that all Hallow's Eve, Halloween is

1106
01:12:02,039 --> 01:12:04,479
the eve of the Festival of the Dead, you know,

1107
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:08,800
all Saints Day, November the first is is the Blessed Dead,

1108
01:12:09,359 --> 01:12:12,319
the saints and all those who've blessed us in our lives,

1109
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:15,800
and then all souls. Day November, the day of the Dead,

1110
01:12:16,119 --> 01:12:21,680
celebrated in Mexico so spectacularly and in many Catholic countries,

1111
01:12:22,880 --> 01:12:27,199
is where a good opportunity to remember our ancestors, those

1112
01:12:27,199 --> 01:12:31,359
who've gone before, or those to whom we're still connected

1113
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:34,840
though they're dead, to honor them, to connect with them,

1114
01:12:35,279 --> 01:12:40,640
and to form those to acknowledge these connections. Again. In

1115
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:45,239
most cultures, like traditional cultures like China and Japan and Africa,

1116
01:12:45,920 --> 01:12:48,520
the fact the ancestors are part of our lives today

1117
01:12:48,600 --> 01:12:50,960
and we're bound to them whether we like it or not,

1118
01:12:51,399 --> 01:12:56,000
is taken for granted. Most modern people don't acknowledge that,

1119
01:12:56,119 --> 01:12:59,560
and I think reconnecting in all these ways to our

1120
01:12:59,560 --> 01:13:04,800
ancest to holy places through pilgrimage. I'm a patron of

1121
01:13:04,800 --> 01:13:08,920
the British Pilgrimage Trust and we're helping to reopen the

1122
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:13,319
ancient pilgrimage routes to the holy places of England and

1123
01:13:15,439 --> 01:13:20,600
connecting with festivals. Each tradition has its holy days and festivals.

1124
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:25,239
I'm a Christian, so I'm like to observe the major festivals.

1125
01:13:25,279 --> 01:13:29,119
Of course, Christmas, Easter, all saints and all souls, Saint

1126
01:13:29,159 --> 01:13:35,840
Michael and all angels, Pentecost, the great festivals of the

1127
01:13:35,920 --> 01:13:38,600
year give a shape and a structure to our lives,

1128
01:13:38,920 --> 01:13:43,399
and every religion has its festivals that structure personal and

1129
01:13:43,439 --> 01:13:47,479
collective lives. So I think all these things can help us.

1130
01:13:48,760 --> 01:13:52,319
And if we try and get on without them, without

1131
01:13:52,399 --> 01:13:55,840
them to amputate these traditions, to live in a purely

1132
01:13:55,920 --> 01:14:00,199
secular world where it's just under human control, then look

1133
01:14:00,199 --> 01:14:02,279
at the world we've got today. That's a pretty good

1134
01:14:02,319 --> 01:14:06,680
representation of what happens. It has some advantages, but it

1135
01:14:06,720 --> 01:14:10,920
has many disadvantages, and it's not going to be business

1136
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:14,000
as usual whether we like it or not. So I

1137
01:14:14,000 --> 01:14:19,039
think the best way forward is to try and reconnect

1138
01:14:19,079 --> 01:14:21,880
in all these ways in a way that will make

1139
01:14:21,960 --> 01:14:28,600
us more healthy, that will heal our civilization, heal ourselves,

1140
01:14:28,920 --> 01:14:31,319
and heal our relationship with the world around us.

1141
01:14:31,760 --> 01:14:34,560
Speaker 1: Robert, it is that was so beautiful. Thank you so

1142
01:14:34,640 --> 01:14:37,399
much for this conversation. It has been such a pleasure

1143
01:14:37,439 --> 01:14:40,239
talking to you, and thank you for doing the work

1144
01:14:40,279 --> 01:14:43,159
that you have been doing all your life and hoping

1145
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:47,000
and helping all of us awaken to a hopefully a

1146
01:14:47,079 --> 01:14:49,840
higher consciousness. So I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you

1147
01:14:49,840 --> 01:14:50,680
again for being here.

1148
01:14:51,199 --> 01:14:53,600
Speaker 2: Well, thanks very much, Alex, and thanks for what you're

1149
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:57,439
doing too to help bring about raising of consciousness.

1150
01:14:59,079 --> 01:15:00,199
Speaker 1: Do you want to get links to any thing we

1151
01:15:00,199 --> 01:15:01,920
spoke about in this episode, head over into the show

1152
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:06,319
notes at Next levelsoul dot com Forward slash six four two.

1153
01:15:06,439 --> 01:15:06,600
Speaker 2: Now.

1154
01:15:06,640 --> 01:15:10,119
Speaker 1: If this conversation stirred something in you, there's more waiting.

1155
01:15:10,479 --> 01:15:13,960
You can listen to this episode completely commercial free on

1156
01:15:14,079 --> 01:15:18,319
Next level Soul TV's app where Soul meets streaming. Watch

1157
01:15:18,359 --> 01:15:22,880
and listen on Appleios, Android, Apple TV, Ruku, Android TV,

1158
01:15:23,239 --> 01:15:28,800
Buyer tv LG, and Samsung apps anytime anywhere. Begin your

1159
01:15:28,840 --> 01:15:33,119
awakening at Next levelsoul dot tv. Thank you so much

1160
01:15:33,159 --> 01:15:36,760
for listening. As I always say, trust the journey. It's

1161
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:39,600
there to teach you. I'll see you next time.