Evidence That Your Mind is NOT Just In Your Brain - Rupert Sheldrake
Summary
TLDRThe video explores the idea that consciousness and the mind extend beyond the brain, challenging materialist views. It introduces the concept of fields in science, drawing parallels between electromagnetic fields and the mind's ability to reach out beyond the body. Rupert Sheldrake discusses the phenomenon of feeling stared at, proposing it as evidence of mind interacting with fields. He suggests that consciousness is not confined to the brain but extends through the body and beyond, offering a broader perspective on the mind-body connection and the hard problem of consciousness.
Takeaways
- 🌐 The idea that everything is confined to the brain is too limiting; there are broader scientific perspectives that include fields extending beyond the brain.
- ⚡ Fields like gravitational, electromagnetic, and others are invisible but have major influences on physical objects, stretching far beyond them.
- 🧠 The brain and mind are often localized, but fields of the mind might extend beyond the body, suggesting that consciousness is not confined to the head.
- 👁️ Extramission theory suggests that images are not just received by the brain but also projected outward, meaning what we see exists where it appears, not solely inside our heads.
- 🔄 Intromission (light entering the eyes) and extramission (images projected outward) are two theories of vision, with the latter being taught for understanding mirrors and still held by many.
- 👀 The sense of being stared at, or 'scopaesthesia,' is a common experience and has been statistically verified through numerous experiments.
- 🔬 Experiments show that even though people are taught that nothing goes out of the eyes, many retain a belief in extramission, indicating it's a deeply ingrained concept.
- 🐾 Animals, like humans, seem to possess the ability to sense when they are being looked at, which may have evolved in predator-prey relationships.
- 🧬 The sense of being stared at is thought to have biological and evolutionary roots, with practical applications in fields like martial arts and detective work.
- 🌟 Minds may extend beyond the brain through fields and may interact with electromagnetism, challenging the traditional view that consciousness is confined to the brain.
Q & A
What is the main argument Rupert Sheldrake presents about the brain and mind in this transcript?
-Sheldrake argues that the idea that the mind is confined to the brain is limiting. He proposes that consciousness and the mind extend beyond the brain, interacting with the world through invisible fields, much like how gravitational or electromagnetic fields work.
What scientific concept does Sheldrake use to explain how minds might extend beyond the brain?
-Sheldrake uses the concept of fields, like gravitational or electromagnetic fields, to explain how the mind could extend beyond the brain. He suggests that consciousness operates through these invisible fields, much like physical forces in nature.
How does Sheldrake connect vision to his theory of the extended mind?
-Sheldrake explains that when we see something, we are not just processing images inside our heads. He argues that vision involves a projection of images outward, meaning our consciousness extends to where the objects are, rather than just being confined to our brain.
What is the 'intromission' theory of vision, and how does it differ from the 'extramission' theory?
-The intromission theory of vision, developed by Kepler, holds that light enters the eyes and forms images inside the brain. The extramission theory, which Sheldrake supports, suggests that not only does light come in, but our mind projects images outward, creating a more extended experience of vision.
What does Sheldrake mean by 'scopesthesia,' and how does it relate to his theory of the extended mind?
-Scopesthesia refers to the sense of being stared at. Sheldrake uses it to support his theory of the extended mind, suggesting that when someone looks at us, their mind might be reaching out through invisible fields, allowing us to feel their gaze.
What evidence does Sheldrake provide for the sense of being stared at?
-Sheldrake cites experiments conducted at over 37 schools and colleges, along with research at the Nemo Science Museum, which involved 20,000 participants. These experiments showed statistically significant results indicating that people can sense when they are being stared at, supporting his theory.
How does Sheldrake use animal behavior to support his argument?
-Sheldrake points out that many animals have the ability to sense when they are being watched by predators. This evolutionary trait, he argues, suggests that the ability to sense a gaze could be biologically ingrained and that the mind might extend outward to interact with the world.
What does Sheldrake say about phantom limbs in relation to the extended mind?
-Sheldrake suggests that people who experience phantom limbs are not just feeling sensations inside their brain but are projecting a part of their mind to the location where the limb used to be, which aligns with his theory of the mind extending beyond the brain.
What does Sheldrake believe about the connection between consciousness and electromagnetism?
-Sheldrake proposes that consciousness may interface with electromagnetic fields, much like brain activity correlates with electromagnetic signals. He suggests that this interaction could extend beyond the brain, challenging the conventional view that consciousness is confined to the head.
What is Sheldrake's critique of materialist theories of the brain and consciousness?
-Sheldrake criticizes materialist theories for confining consciousness and the mind to the brain, arguing that these views ignore the broader possibilities offered by the concept of fields and the extended mind. He believes that limiting consciousness to the brain hinders progress in solving the 'hard problem' of mind-brain interaction.
Outlines
💡 Fields of Influence: Beyond the Brain
The speaker challenges the materialist perspective that limits consciousness to the brain, introducing the broader scientific concept of fields, such as gravitational and electromagnetic fields. These fields, although invisible, have immense influence, and the speaker proposes that consciousness operates similarly, extending beyond the brain through mental fields. This theory, according to the speaker, could play a critical role in addressing the hard problem of consciousness.
🔍 Extramission Theory of Vision
The speaker explains the contrast between the intromission theory (light entering the eyes) and the ancient extramission theory, which suggests that we project our visual images outward. Using examples like mirrors and reflections, the speaker explains how we see virtual images outside ourselves. Despite intromission being the dominant scientific view, extramission remains a widespread and deep-seated way of understanding vision, even among children and non-experts.
👀 The Sense of Being Watched
The speaker dives into the phenomenon of 'scopaesthesia'—the feeling of being stared at—suggesting it might be real rather than an illusion. Various experiments and anecdotal evidence point to humans (and animals) sensing when they are being watched, even when unaware of an observer. The speaker suggests this ability evolved in predator-prey relationships and may hint at a broader understanding of the mind’s capacity to extend beyond the brain.
🧠 The Extended Mind and Phantom Limbs
The speaker extends their theory to other mind-body phenomena, such as phantom limbs, arguing that these experiences are part of the 'extended mind' and not simply confined to the brain. By challenging the materialist dogma, they propose that exploring how consciousness interfaces with electromagnetic fields and extends beyond the body could be key to solving the hard problem of mind-brain interaction.
📱 Experimenting with Perception
The speaker concludes by mentioning ongoing research, including an app designed to help people train their sensitivity to the sense of being stared at. They encourage viewers to experiment with it and share their experiences, emphasizing that this research is in progress and there is still much to learn about enhancing this ability.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Fields
💡Materialism
💡Intromission Theory
💡Extramission Theory
💡Scopesthesia
💡Electromagnetic Fields
💡Hard Problem of Consciousness
💡Extended Mind
💡Phantom Limbs
💡Jean Piaget
Highlights
The idea that the mind is confined to the brain is an unnecessary limitation, and fields of the mind may extend beyond the body.
Fields in nature, such as gravitational and electromagnetic fields, extend beyond physical objects and have significant effects even though they are invisible.
The extramission theory of vision suggests that not only does light enter the eyes, but the mind projects images outward, making consciousness extend beyond the head.
Jean Piaget showed that young children naturally believe in extramission, projecting images outwards, a deeply ingrained way of perceiving vision.
Visual extramission, the projection of images outwards, is taught in physics to explain how mirrors work, but it's considered a heresy in biology and psychology.
The sense of being stared at, or 'scopesthesia,' is a common phenomenon where people can feel when someone is looking at them from behind.
Scientific experiments, including large-scale studies in museums, show statistically significant results proving the sense of being stared at is real.
Predators and prey may have evolved the ability to sense being stared at for survival, making this phenomenon deeply embedded in biology.
Private detectives, martial artists, and surveillance officers often use the sense of being watched as part of their training, validating its practical application.
Brain activity that correlates with consciousness involves electromagnetic activity, suggesting that consciousness could extend beyond the brain through electromagnetic fields.
Phantom limb sensations after amputations are an example of the extended mind, as people project and feel the lost limb outside the body.
The extended mind theory could help solve the 'hard problem' of consciousness by moving beyond the idea that consciousness is confined within the brain.
Rupert Sheldrake suggests that the mind's interaction with electromagnetism isn't confined to the head, as traditional materialist science assumes.
Sheldrake proposes that once the arbitrary boundary between mind and brain is removed, it could lead to breakthroughs in understanding consciousness.
A mobile app has been developed to train users to become better at detecting when they are being stared at, supporting further research into this ability.
Transcripts
[Music] I think that the idea that it's all in the brain is an unnecessary limitation materialist
thinking about the brain is extraordinarily local it localizes all these things actually
inside the head but within the Sciences since the 19th century we now have a much broader view of M
and the way that nature is organized and this is broadened through the concept of
fields first introduced into science by Michael Faraday uh in relation to electric and magnetic
fields then through Einstein's general theory of relativity taken to include the gravitational
field and there are many fields in in science now fields are defined as regions of influence they're
usually invisible the gravitational field of the earth is in the Earth but EX extends far beyond
it the reason we're not floating in the air at the moment is because it's holding us down to the
ground it's invisible this room is full of it but we can't see it it holds the moon in its orbit it
stretches far beyond the Earth the gravitational field of the Moon affects the tides on the earth
so these are invisible Fields with enormous effects at a distance even though you can't
see them uh electrical and magnetic fields also stretch out Beyond physical objects a magnetic
field stretches out far beyond the magnet you can reveal its lines of force through sprinkling
iron filings around it but the field itself is invisible and the electromagnetic fields of your
mobile telephone uh within the mobile telephone but stretch invisibly Beyond it this room is full
of radio Transmissions from mobile phones from radio and television programs the the world is
full of invisible Fields this is a revelation of 19th and 20th Century science which I don't think
has been taken on board by people thinking about materialist theories of the brain and what I'd
like to suggest is that our fields of our mind stretch out far beyond our bodies they stretch
out invisibly and our Consciousness is related to and based on these fields that if we're going to
solve the heart problem taking into account fields of the Mind may be a very important in ingredient
as well as studying processes within the brain the easiest way to see what I'm talking about
is indeed through vision what's going on when you see something um well everybody knows that light
comes into the eyes ever since Johan Kepler in 16004 worked out that there were inverted images
on the retina we know that the lens focuses the light in each eye you have a small inverted image
on your retina changes happen in the Cod cells and the rod cells impulses travel up the optic nerve
changes happen in various regions of the brain all this has been mapped and scanned in Greater
detail than ever before but the mysterious part is then what happens next how do you create images
three-dimensional full color images they're all supposed to be inside your head representations of
the outer world so I can see you sitting there you can see me here but all of you are supposed to be
inside my head as lots of faces and and the whole of this room is meant to be and inside your head
is supposed to be a little ret um somewhere inside your brain that's not what we actually experience
what we actually experience is that our images are out there your image of me I'm imagining is
where I'm actually standing right now and my image of you is where you are so this oneway
theory of Vision which we've all grown up with and which comes from Kepler the intromission theory of
vision sending in intromission is taken to be the standard scientific view but there's another and
older theory of vision the extramission theory that says not only does light come in but the
images we see are projected out so my images of you are where they seem to be they're in
my mind they're in my Consciousness but they're not inside my head they're where you're sitting
now this idea is familiar to the ancient Greeks it's familiar to people all over the world the
developmental psychologist Jean P showed that young European children in his book the child's
conception of the world think that they're projecting out images that they take it for
granted so this is in fact a very deep-seated way of thinking about vision and uid the great
geometer used it to explain in the first a really clear way how mirrors work what happens when you
look at something in a mirror is the light is reflected from the mirror the angle of incidence
the angle of reflection are the same but what happens then is you project out the images uh
which go straight through the mirror being virtual mental projections and you see virtual images
behind the mirror and ID's theory is still there in school textbooks to explain mirrors all of you
no doubt have seen these diagrams they involve little dotted lines behind the mirror that go
to What's called a virtual image behind the mirror a projection of the Mind behind the mirror and so
this extra mission a sending out theory of vision is actually taught to all school children even
though within most of science it's regarded as a total heresy intromission is the only permissible
theory in biology and psychology whereas in Optics which comes under physics extra is the
standard Theory and no wonder it's confusing people are taught two completely different
theories of vision at Ohio State University Gerald Wier who's a professor of Psychology
was shocked to find that most adults and children he interviewed believed in visual extramission
something going out of the eyes even his own psychology undergraduates believed it so heall
this a fundamental misunderstanding of visual perception and he decided to re-educate them and
he and his colleagues told them forcefully over and over again nothing goes out of the eyes when
you look at something and after repeated drilling with this into the students when they were tested
immediately after this denial of extramission uh teaching they gave the correct answers but
when they tested them 3 to 5 months later almost all of them had reverted to their previous views
they were dismayed at this failure of scientific education much more recently in fact just in the
last few years arid gutam uh at working first at Princeton University now at the kinska institute
in Stockholm has shown that uh by some very ingenious experiments that people attribute
a gental force to the Gaze as it goes out of the eyes and they've even shown using fmri that
regions of the brain involved in tracking movement are activated and as he puts it the results
this is a quote strongly suggests that when people view a face looking at an object the brain treats
that gaze as if a movement were present passing from the face to the object and they found that
this occurred even in people who didn't believe in visual extramission it's deep hardwired in the
way we see and they tried to explain this by saying there must be an evolutionary
reason for it that in uh it's important to track people's gaze in social situations
and this leads to the illusion that something's going out of the eyes when you look at things it
it make much better sense in evolutionary terms if it's not an illusion but if it's real and so
is it real well you're not meant to think it's real because that goes against the Dogma that
the mind is nothing but the activity of the brain and the perceptions are inside the head but is it
testable well I think it is if when I look at you a projection from my mind that touches you my mind
in a sense reaches out to touch you if I look at you from behind and you don't know I'm there could
you feel that I'm looking at you well as soon as you ask that question you realize that the sense
of being stared at is very common it's now called scop athesia the scientific name for it scop as
in microscope seeing aesthesia feeling as in synesthesia anesthesia scop athesia is extremely
common most people have experence experienced it I'm sure most people in this room have experienced
it you turn around you find someone's looking at you or you stare at someone and they turn around
and look back doesn't happen all the time but it's very common most people have experienced it
including most children it's usually directional you turn and look straight at the person you don't
just feel uneasy and search around I I have a recent paper on directional scof athesia
showing that on the basis of 960 case studies the directionality is just a basic feature of this and
the way people experience it I've investigated the Natural History we've interviewed uh We've dealt
with through questionnaires we found it typically happens uh most powerfully with strangers often
with male strangers in situations that could be vaguely threatening we've done interviews
with more than 50 surveillance officers celebrity photographers and private detectives practically
all of whom just take this for granted if you've ever trained to be a private detective and I'm
guessing that most of you haven't uh you you will have learned that um when you're following someone
shadowing somebody you don't stare at their back cuz if you do they'll turn around catch your eyes
and your cover's blown you have to look at them a little bit otherwise you lose them but you look at
their feet so among practical people these things are completely taken for granted in the martial
arts it's taken for granted and they have methods of training people to become more sensitive
because if you can feel when someone's approaching from behind who might attack you you'll survive
better than if you didn't feel it they train this ability people get better at it well many
experiments have already been done on the sense of being stared at they've been done
in at least 37 different schools and colleges have been replicated in many parts of the world
the statistical significance is astronomical the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam an experiment on
the sense of being stared at was running for more than 20 years more than 20,000 people took part
it was called have you got eyes in the back of your head and people had to guess whether
they were being looked at or not in a randomized sequence of Trials the results were astronomically
significant statistically I mean I didn't run this experiment myself it was run by the Dutch Museum
the results were analyzed by Dutch statisticians and it showed a massively significant effect the
most sensitive subjects in incidentally were children under the Agee of nine so here we have
something which is extremely well known it's well known all over the world the scientific
evidence suggests it really happens the scientific teaching of how mirror's work assumes that there's
an extem mission of influences it seems to be deep receit in biology it happens with animals
animals can tell when they're being looked at and people can tell when animals are looking at them
so here we have a very very well-known phenomenon very deep-seated biologically many different
species of animals have shown this ability I think it's evolved in the context of Predator prey
relationships a prey animal that could tell when a predator was looking at it a hidden Predator was
looking at it would survive better than one that didn't and I think it has enormous implications
for our understanding of the mind because if our minds are not just about what happens in brains
and if our conscious experience is extended through electromagnetic fields which is what
light is it suggests that Minds have an interface with electromagnetism we know they do in the brain
a lot of brain activity that correlates with Consciousness is electromagnetic activity there
seems to be an interface between electromagnetism and Consciousness and why it should be confined
to the inside of the head is a purely arbitrary assumption it comes from Ren deart originally I
suppose um or from the ancient Greek materialists but deart made a division between extended things
rise extensor matter is extended in space whereas mind re cutans was not extended in
space it was defined by being unextended so the idea was the mind was unextended but interacted
with the brain somewhere inside the head so I'm suggesting that actually when we let go of that
assumption which has been so limiting for for so long we can broaden our view of the mind and uh
go further than we've gone so far in a way that will help solve the real problems leading towards
the hard problem finally I just want to say that I think the extended mind doesn't just extend out
into the world it extends throughout the body when someone has say a phantom limb after an amputation
I think that that Phantom limb is part of the extended mind and that people feel the limb uh to
be really there and I think what they're ex doing is projecting that image of the limb and feeling
it from within as to where the limb actually is the official view is it's all inside the brain
but I don't think it is and so I think once we Liberate the Mind from the brain more generally
and Consciousness from the brain more more particularly we have a much wider context for
discussing this naughty problem the hard problem of the relation between mind and brain when we
take into account the extended mind instead of just arbitrarily confining to the inside of the
head we're much more likely to make progress in understanding how minds are related to our bodies
and to the physical Fields through which we see and through which we have our experiences thank
you thank you for watching this video produced by after skool I'm Rupert sheldrake if you want
to learn more about my work you can can go to my website sheldrake.org or my YouTube channel the
links are below I'm also continuing this research on the feeling of being stared at I now have an
app that works on cell phones where you can train yourself to get better at it I don't know how
easy it is to train yourself to get better at it because this is a new project but please do have
a go if you can if you can get better at it and if you have any suggestions as to how others might be
able to to become more sensitive do please email me and let me know how you've been getting on
thank you for watching and I hope you're watch the next production that I do with after skool
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