Navigating Consciousness with Rupert Sheldrake

The Perrott-Warrick public debate: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Nov 29, 2006. Chaired by Professor Simon Blackburn. 

The Society for Psychical Research Study Day on Skeptics: London, October 25 2008. Read a review of the day's proceedings by Matt Colborn: https://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/examining-skeptics/matt-colborn-sprs-study-day-on-skeptics/

A dialogue with Joseph Milne on nature and science in our modern world, which took place at the Temenos Academy on July 13, 2009. 

London Society for Psychical Research, November 4, 2017 Many animals make remarkable migrations across vast distances, often without ever personally making the trip or having any obvious method of navigating. Recorded on November 4, 2017 at the Society for Psychical Research in London.

This is dialogue on angels with Father Bede Griffiths, Rupert's principal teacher, and the only public dialogue they ever had. Recorded in Munich in 1992 at the Benedictine Abbey of  St Boniface on September 29, the feast of St Michael and All Angels. Father Bede, also known as Swami Dayananda, was a British-born priest and Benedictine monk who became a noted yogi in South India and was a par...

A sermon given on Trinity Sunday, 2019 at St Thomas' Church, Finsbury Park, London.

This was the opening keynote talk at the 2021 Mystics and Scientists Conference, hosted by David Lorimer and presented by the Scientific and Medical Network (https://scientificandmedical.net). The entire conference is available on their channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLHvmUdBmYuqOh0wtGrS73A

For five years Rupert was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, administered by Trinity College, Cambridge, for research on unexplained human and animal abilities. Recorded at Cambridge University on February 9th, 2011.  Field observations have suggested that wolves and other wild animals may communicate telepathically over many miles, and surveys have shown that about 50% of dog owners and...

Dartington Great Hall, Devon, January 28, 2015. Rupert talks about his own spiritual journey, and about the contemporary cultural, intellectual and social movements leading to a rediscovery of God.

Rupert talks about archetypes, Jung’s collective unconscious, ancient Greek and Jewish philosophies about reality, Sir Francis Bacon, mechanistic science, progressivist views of Darwin, big bang cosmology, multiverse theory, the Hindu and Buddhist world views, and how they all relate to the idea of memory in nature. Recorded at the UK Council for Psychotherapy, Nov 26th, 2014.

What do you believe the memory is comprised of in holy places? Is it energy or something else? Everything in nature, according to modern science, depends on form and energy. If you have form without energy, its virtual, it doesn't do anything. Without the flow of breath, you can't have speech. Similarly, without energy, forms are static, lifeless, inert. So it is with holy places; throug...

All cultures, as far as I know, have holy places. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, by their very nature nomadic, and  seem to have carried out ceremonies at holy places like Lascaux and Chauvet caves. When people settled in the Neolithic, starting twelve thousand years ago, they were building ceremonial structures, including standing stones and stone circles. Some were built before settled agr...

Thomas Fairchild was a pioneering plant breeder who lived in Shoreditch, in the East End of London. When he died in 1729, he left a legacy for a "Vegetable Sermon" to be preached each year in Shoreditch Parish Church in the week following Pentecost on "the wonderful works of God in creation". Recorded on May 15, 2015. Sorry for the poor quality of this recording. It was improve...

Rupert speculates on the possibility that stars are conscious, given not only the complexity and dynamism of their electro-magnetic activity, but also that all traditional cultures have taken it for granted that the Sun is alive and intelligent. Recorded at the Electric Universe conference in 2018 on July 7th, Bath, UK. Rupert’s technical paper on the consciousness of the sun was published on Apri...

A question to Rupert from Ali-Reza Omidvar of the Oxford Psychedelic Society; March, 2022. https://oxpsysoc.org/ Don't you think there is a kind of a philosophical principle: that a community of people who have had more states of consciousness are a more qualified community to give judgments on reality? Not to say that their judgment is right and accurate, but just to say that, for example, t...

Easter and Passover are closely linked festivals , and this year they overlap, with Passover beginning on Good Friday, April 14. Both are rooted in ancient traditions of blood sacrifice, which in turn has its evolutionary roots in the behaviour of predators; when they have killed one prey animal and have enough to eat, the others are safe for a while. The death of one protects the others. These ar...

A question to Rupert from the Oxford Psychedelic Society; March, 2022. Hosted by Ali-Reza Omidvar. https://oxpsysoc.org/ You mentioned Terence McKenna. He said about the current situation of our society, and about our point in history as a whole, that we are in a state of transition. He compared it to the process of birth, which you mentioned in your talk (Episode 35:Expanding Consciousness with P...

This talk was given to the Oxford Psychedelic Society in March, 2022 and was hosted by Ali-Reza Omidvar. https://oxpsysoc.org/

Rupert and David Abram probe the meaning and manifestation of magic. Recorded at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, Canada, on August 6, 2015. David Abram, PhD, is a cultural ecologist, founder of The Alliance for Wild Ethics and award winning author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. An accomplished storyteller and...

This excerpt is from a panel discussion at IAI’s festival, HowTheLightGetsIn, entitled _Trash, trends and the transcendent_ recorded 21st February 2022. What really is the sublime and where can we find it in the 21st century? Watch the full discussion on IAI TV: https://iai.tv/video/trash-trends-and-the-transcendent?_auid=2020

Dr Sheldrake explores the evolution of the sense of beauty in animals and humans, how beauty seems to be inherent in nature, arising in resonance with animal minds both great and small. Recorded Hollyhock on Cortes Island, British Columbia, August 2017.

A discussion between Rupert and Michael Brooks, consultant for the New Scientist and author of “13 Things That Don't Make Sense”. Chair: Vivienne Parry, science broadcaster and author of “The Truth About Hormones” at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London on Jan 27 2009. 

Rupert and theologian Jonas Atlas take a deep dive into the seven secular myths about religion. The article by Atlas that sparked this conversation can be found here:  https://bit.ly/3fRwnw4 Recorded July 20th, 2020.

A talk about research on the sense of being stared at, given to the Society for Psychical Research https://www.spr.ac.uk on January 31, 2022. Rupert outlines the natural history of this phenomenon, experienced by more than 90% of the population, including children, which is also widespread among non-human animals. He discusses its implications for theories of vision and the ideas about the extende...

Social groups as morphic fields have a kind of built-in memory. In human families the family has a kind of field and the field of the family has patterns and habits within it, and this is most graphically illustrated by a form of psychotherapy called systemic family constellations, pioneered by the German psychologist Bert Hellinger. An excerpt from a talk at the 2012 IONS Conference in San Franci...