Guest speakers: Rupert Sheldrake and Joseph Chilton Pearce
PROGRAM NOTES:
Date this lecture was recorded: August 28, 1993
Today’s podcast features a conversation that was held on August 28, 1993 between Rupert Sheldrake, the originator of the Morphic Resonance theory, and Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of many books including The Crack in the Cosmic Egg and other works investigating the brain, the mind, and consciousness. As their discussion proceeds they explore the concept that, as observers, WE actually are creating reality. Their conclusion to this often explored area of quantum physics is that, no, WE don’t create the physical world. Rather, we are largely the recipients of it and our job is to learn how to participate with it and go along with it.
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So, I had my two minutes face-to-face with Roger Penrose this evening, and I’m even more confused now. I asked him whether Emperor’s New Mind was essentially an argument against strong AI, which is how I understood Rupert’s perspective (hope I’m not misinterpreting that), or whether it was against machine consciousness, which is the way I read it. Roger agreed that it was approaching the subject of machine consciousness, but then indicated that he thought it possible that, in the deep future, there would be a way of analyzing the individual neurons, and their connections, in the brain, and reproduce that on a machine. He said we were ‘nowhere near that’ at present.
….but this is what I thought he was saying (in Emperor’s New Mind) could not happen!
I guess the reality is that a couple of minutes chat in a book-signing queue is not the best environment to dig into such a complex and subtle topic….
Anyhow, after his lecture, there was an announcement about a new institution set up in his name to study such phenomena. It might be of interest to some of you reading through these comments…
https://penroseinstitute.com/
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Thanks for your comment. I found it quite interesting, and I agree with your take on it.]
I have a small issue with terminology here. About 20 minutes in, Rupert Sheldrake states that Roger Penrose is arguing against artificial intelligence in The Emperor’s New Mind. I think he was actually positing that conscious computers were not a viable proposition.
I’m going to a Penrose lecture next month; I’ll try and confirm this with him.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Thanks, and please let us know what he says.]
Who is the other researcher/author they’re discussing? It sounds like his Name is “Bob John”. Rupert mentions him at 38:25. Anybody?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Jahn
Good thing you played RAW directly before this talk. A series of assertions, not a balanced argument. Fun ideas to think about but essentially woo…
Really delightful. Two very clear, wise and scientifically current minds. I will be giving this a second listen. Rupert Sheldrake has a wonderful quality of calm empathy which is rare for someone so articulate about science.
The fact that his question about prayer and F Capra evoked a negation by Pierce of Capra’s thinking set up an interesting tension which gave the emerging discussion a weight it might have lacked. Both men wanted to acknowledge an aspiration toward ” higher values” empathy, intuition, wisdom, inner peace, but also the mechanisms by which such things might function. Those values and qualities are hard to talk about because they lead to such loaded words but they managed to point out ways of thinking about an aspiration that seems so critical to our continued evolution in a scientific language about the nature of consciousness.
I certainly felt in my own development this longing at the ages described and which led to psychedelics as part of what seemed to address that longing. I am in my 60s now and have taken many a side trip before letting that original experiential insight begin to revive and play out in my life. At this point I disagree with Pierce’s idea that there has been no successful creation of a community of spirit-minded people in touch with scientific and heart wisdom. I feel it is quite real but not in any particular set of beliefs or cultural groups . It is more like a scattered tribe. Perhaps adversity will bring out its strength and connectedness.