00:09[Music] I think that the idea that it's all in
the brain is an unnecessary limitation materialist
00:16thinking about the brain is extraordinarily
local it localizes all these things actually
00:21inside the head but within the Sciences since the
19th century we now have a much broader view of M
00:30and the way that nature is organized and
this is broadened through the concept of
00:35fields first introduced into science by Michael
Faraday uh in relation to electric and magnetic
00:41fields then through Einstein's general theory
of relativity taken to include the gravitational
00:48field and there are many fields in in science now
fields are defined as regions of influence they're
00:55usually invisible the gravitational field of the
earth is in the Earth but EX extends far beyond
01:01it the reason we're not floating in the air at
the moment is because it's holding us down to the
01:06ground it's invisible this room is full of it but
we can't see it it holds the moon in its orbit it
01:12stretches far beyond the Earth the gravitational
field of the Moon affects the tides on the earth
01:19so these are invisible Fields with enormous
effects at a distance even though you can't
01:25see them uh electrical and magnetic fields also
stretch out Beyond physical objects a magnetic
01:31field stretches out far beyond the magnet you
can reveal its lines of force through sprinkling
01:36iron filings around it but the field itself is
invisible and the electromagnetic fields of your
01:42mobile telephone uh within the mobile telephone
but stretch invisibly Beyond it this room is full
01:49of radio Transmissions from mobile phones from
radio and television programs the the world is
01:55full of invisible Fields this is a revelation of
19th and 20th Century science which I don't think
02:03has been taken on board by people thinking about
materialist theories of the brain and what I'd
02:10like to suggest is that our fields of our mind
stretch out far beyond our bodies they stretch
02:17out invisibly and our Consciousness is related to
and based on these fields that if we're going to
02:24solve the heart problem taking into account fields
of the Mind may be a very important in ingredient
02:30as well as studying processes within the brain
the easiest way to see what I'm talking about
02:36is indeed through vision what's going on when you
see something um well everybody knows that light
02:44comes into the eyes ever since Johan Kepler in
16004 worked out that there were inverted images
02:51on the retina we know that the lens focuses the
light in each eye you have a small inverted image
02:57on your retina changes happen in the Cod cells and
the rod cells impulses travel up the optic nerve
03:04changes happen in various regions of the brain
all this has been mapped and scanned in Greater
03:11detail than ever before but the mysterious part
is then what happens next how do you create images
03:19three-dimensional full color images they're all
supposed to be inside your head representations of
03:25the outer world so I can see you sitting there you
can see me here but all of you are supposed to be
03:31inside my head as lots of faces and and the whole
of this room is meant to be and inside your head
03:38is supposed to be a little ret um somewhere inside
your brain that's not what we actually experience
03:46what we actually experience is that our images
are out there your image of me I'm imagining is
03:52where I'm actually standing right now and my
image of you is where you are so this oneway
03:59theory of Vision which we've all grown up with and
which comes from Kepler the intromission theory of
04:05vision sending in intromission is taken to be the
standard scientific view but there's another and
04:13older theory of vision the extramission theory
that says not only does light come in but the
04:18images we see are projected out so my images
of you are where they seem to be they're in
04:24my mind they're in my Consciousness but they're
not inside my head they're where you're sitting
04:30now this idea is familiar to the ancient Greeks
it's familiar to people all over the world the
04:37developmental psychologist Jean P showed that
young European children in his book the child's
04:43conception of the world think that they're
projecting out images that they take it for
04:48granted so this is in fact a very deep-seated
way of thinking about vision and uid the great
04:56geometer used it to explain in the first a really
clear way how mirrors work what happens when you
05:03look at something in a mirror is the light is
reflected from the mirror the angle of incidence
05:08the angle of reflection are the same but what
happens then is you project out the images uh
05:14which go straight through the mirror being virtual
mental projections and you see virtual images
05:21behind the mirror and ID's theory is still there
in school textbooks to explain mirrors all of you
05:28no doubt have seen these diagrams they involve
little dotted lines behind the mirror that go
05:34to What's called a virtual image behind the mirror
a projection of the Mind behind the mirror and so
05:41this extra mission a sending out theory of vision
is actually taught to all school children even
05:47though within most of science it's regarded as a
total heresy intromission is the only permissible
05:53theory in biology and psychology whereas in
Optics which comes under physics extra is the
06:00standard Theory and no wonder it's confusing
people are taught two completely different
06:04theories of vision at Ohio State University
Gerald Wier who's a professor of Psychology
06:11was shocked to find that most adults and children
he interviewed believed in visual extramission
06:18something going out of the eyes even his own
psychology undergraduates believed it so heall
06:25this a fundamental misunderstanding of visual
perception and he decided to re-educate them and
06:31he and his colleagues told them forcefully over
and over again nothing goes out of the eyes when
06:36you look at something and after repeated drilling
with this into the students when they were tested
06:42immediately after this denial of extramission
uh teaching they gave the correct answers but
06:48when they tested them 3 to 5 months later almost
all of them had reverted to their previous views
06:55they were dismayed at this failure of scientific
education much more recently in fact just in the
07:01last few years arid gutam uh at working first at
Princeton University now at the kinska institute
07:08in Stockholm has shown that uh by some very
ingenious experiments that people attribute
07:15a gental force to the Gaze as it goes out of
the eyes and they've even shown using fmri that
07:22regions of the brain involved in tracking movement
are activated and as he puts it the results
07:29this is a quote strongly suggests that when people
view a face looking at an object the brain treats
07:35that gaze as if a movement were present passing
from the face to the object and they found that
07:42this occurred even in people who didn't believe
in visual extramission it's deep hardwired in the
07:48way we see and they tried to explain this
by saying there must be an evolutionary
07:53reason for it that in uh it's important to
track people's gaze in social situations
07:59and this leads to the illusion that something's
going out of the eyes when you look at things it
08:05it make much better sense in evolutionary terms
if it's not an illusion but if it's real and so
08:12is it real well you're not meant to think it's
real because that goes against the Dogma that
08:18the mind is nothing but the activity of the brain
and the perceptions are inside the head but is it
08:25testable well I think it is if when I look at you
a projection from my mind that touches you my mind
08:33in a sense reaches out to touch you if I look at
you from behind and you don't know I'm there could
08:38you feel that I'm looking at you well as soon as
you ask that question you realize that the sense
08:43of being stared at is very common it's now called
scop athesia the scientific name for it scop as
08:50in microscope seeing aesthesia feeling as in
synesthesia anesthesia scop athesia is extremely
08:58common most people have experence experienced it
I'm sure most people in this room have experienced
09:02it you turn around you find someone's looking at
you or you stare at someone and they turn around
09:07and look back doesn't happen all the time but
it's very common most people have experienced it
09:13including most children it's usually directional
you turn and look straight at the person you don't
09:19just feel uneasy and search around I I have
a recent paper on directional scof athesia
09:24showing that on the basis of 960 case studies the
directionality is just a basic feature of this and
09:31the way people experience it I've investigated the
Natural History we've interviewed uh We've dealt
09:38with through questionnaires we found it typically
happens uh most powerfully with strangers often
09:44with male strangers in situations that could
be vaguely threatening we've done interviews
09:49with more than 50 surveillance officers celebrity
photographers and private detectives practically
09:55all of whom just take this for granted if you've
ever trained to be a private detective and I'm
10:01guessing that most of you haven't uh you you will
have learned that um when you're following someone
10:07shadowing somebody you don't stare at their back
cuz if you do they'll turn around catch your eyes
10:12and your cover's blown you have to look at them a
little bit otherwise you lose them but you look at
10:17their feet so among practical people these things
are completely taken for granted in the martial
10:24arts it's taken for granted and they have methods
of training people to become more sensitive
10:29because if you can feel when someone's approaching
from behind who might attack you you'll survive
10:35better than if you didn't feel it they train
this ability people get better at it well many
10:40experiments have already been done on the
sense of being stared at they've been done
10:44in at least 37 different schools and colleges
have been replicated in many parts of the world
10:50the statistical significance is astronomical the
Nemo science museum in Amsterdam an experiment on
10:59the sense of being stared at was running for more
than 20 years more than 20,000 people took part
11:05it was called have you got eyes in the back
of your head and people had to guess whether
11:09they were being looked at or not in a randomized
sequence of Trials the results were astronomically
11:15significant statistically I mean I didn't run this
experiment myself it was run by the Dutch Museum
11:21the results were analyzed by Dutch statisticians
and it showed a massively significant effect the
11:27most sensitive subjects in incidentally were
children under the Agee of nine so here we have
11:34something which is extremely well known it's
well known all over the world the scientific
11:41evidence suggests it really happens the scientific
teaching of how mirror's work assumes that there's
11:47an extem mission of influences it seems to be
deep receit in biology it happens with animals
11:53animals can tell when they're being looked at and
people can tell when animals are looking at them
11:59so here we have a very very well-known phenomenon
very deep-seated biologically many different
12:06species of animals have shown this ability I
think it's evolved in the context of Predator prey
12:12relationships a prey animal that could tell when
a predator was looking at it a hidden Predator was
12:17looking at it would survive better than one that
didn't and I think it has enormous implications
12:23for our understanding of the mind because if our
minds are not just about what happens in brains
12:30and if our conscious experience is extended
through electromagnetic fields which is what
12:36light is it suggests that Minds have an interface
with electromagnetism we know they do in the brain
12:43a lot of brain activity that correlates with
Consciousness is electromagnetic activity there
12:48seems to be an interface between electromagnetism
and Consciousness and why it should be confined
12:54to the inside of the head is a purely arbitrary
assumption it comes from Ren deart originally I
13:00suppose um or from the ancient Greek materialists
but deart made a division between extended things
13:08rise extensor matter is extended in space
whereas mind re cutans was not extended in
13:15space it was defined by being unextended so the
idea was the mind was unextended but interacted
13:20with the brain somewhere inside the head so I'm
suggesting that actually when we let go of that
13:27assumption which has been so limiting for for so
long we can broaden our view of the mind and uh
13:33go further than we've gone so far in a way that
will help solve the real problems leading towards
13:39the hard problem finally I just want to say that
I think the extended mind doesn't just extend out
13:45into the world it extends throughout the body when
someone has say a phantom limb after an amputation
13:52I think that that Phantom limb is part of the
extended mind and that people feel the limb uh to
13:59be really there and I think what they're ex doing
is projecting that image of the limb and feeling
14:05it from within as to where the limb actually is
the official view is it's all inside the brain
14:11but I don't think it is and so I think once we
Liberate the Mind from the brain more generally
14:17and Consciousness from the brain more more
particularly we have a much wider context for
14:22discussing this naughty problem the hard problem
of the relation between mind and brain when we
14:29take into account the extended mind instead of
just arbitrarily confining to the inside of the
14:34head we're much more likely to make progress in
understanding how minds are related to our bodies
14:41and to the physical Fields through which we see
and through which we have our experiences thank
14:46you thank you for watching this video produced
by after skool I'm Rupert sheldrake if you want
14:56to learn more about my work you can can go to my
website sheldrake.org or my YouTube channel the
15:03links are below I'm also continuing this research
on the feeling of being stared at I now have an
15:10app that works on cell phones where you can train
yourself to get better at it I don't know how
15:17easy it is to train yourself to get better at it
because this is a new project but please do have
15:22a go if you can if you can get better at it and if
you have any suggestions as to how others might be
15:28able to to become more sensitive do please email
me and let me know how you've been getting on
15:34thank you for watching and I hope you're watch
the next production that I do with after skool
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