Science and Spiritual Practices by Rupert Sheldrake

Like biologist Rupert Sheldrake's previous books, this is both interesting and practical. It's also more personal than his other works, providing glimpses of the man behind the ideas, and how he has evolved as an individual and a thinker. A self-described panetheist, Sheldrake meditates, chants, feels grateful, attends evensong and goes on pilgrimages. He speaks of his wife, Jill Purce, a sound healer, and describes his interest in morphic resonance, a topic he has dealt with in previous books.

The author, a biologist, loves trees and gardens and  maintains a strong connection to the natural world. To connect with forces greater than ourselves and to promote health and inner peace, he advocates spending time in nature and in silence.

In this context, he says the purpose of ritual is to connect those who partake in it "with the original event that the ritual commemorates, and also to link them with all those who have participated in the custom in the past." Significantly, "Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present," allowing direct access to past time. In ritual, we intuit and feel the presence of the past. Places hold the resonance of memory, collective and individual.

Sheldrake likes to entertain unusual ideas, for instance, the possibility that the sun is conscious. He argues thus: "If the universe is more like an organism than a machine, then so is our galazy and so is our sun," whose patterns of electromagnetic activity "are much vaster and more complex" than that in our brains." While admitting he "cannot prove that the sun is conscious," he points out that neither can a skeptic prove it isn't, and states that "From a nondogmatic point of view, the consciousness of the sun is an open question." A conscious sun, suggests the scientist, "could modulate the entire solar system by choosing when and where to fire off solar flares and coronal mass ejections." Yet though such events have huge implications for our life on earth, the sun is one of the more-than-human aspects of nature that contemporary people habitually neglect.

The question of beauty is another conundrum. "From a panpsychist point of view, insects and other animals are aware and have minds that are capable of appreciating beauty. Our own minds share in a sense of beauty widespread in the animal kingdom, and many of the forms and colours that appeal to other animals appeal to us too." The idea of beauty makes us think of its source: is it in nature alone, or is there, as the Platonic tradition holds, "a transcendent mind beyond time and space...the ultimate source of all forms"? A view shared by traditional Christian, Muslim and Hindu is that "All the qualities we experience...are present in the mind of God...The whole of nature is a reflection of the creative mind that underlies all things."

Humans love music and it's good for our health. Christians sing in choirs and attend evensong, Hindus sing bhajans of devotion to gods and goddesses, and Sufis chant ecstatically. Sheldrake's wife, Jill Purce, taps into the power of sound in another way: she leads chanting and sound-healing workshops that draw on many cultural traditions including Mongolian and Tuvan. Music in its multifarious forms has been with us a long time: the oldest flutes were made 40,000 years ago, and undoubtedly singing preceded the invention of instruments.

Biologically, music promotes entrainment -- "People breathe together, makes sounds together, and move in synchrony. They come into a resonant, rhythmical relationship with the other members of the group." The author suggests a quick and easy way to demonstrate to yourself how different sounds vibrate in different parts of the body. Plug your ears with your fingertips, then chant single notes, one at a time, and observe how the vibrations move within your body.

Research has found choral singing to be very beneficial, since it "involves focused concentration, which reduces worrying." Singing in a choir also requires deep breathing, and provides social support, education and learning. Not to mention that being committed to choir practice is a good way to motivate oneself to get out and move. Music raises oxytocin levels, which "facilitates trusting behavior and reduces fear and anxiety." This is perhaps why it can be used to soothe agitated dementia patients. To combat feelings of disenchantment, Jill Purce advocates chanting.

Charles Darwin thought that song predated speech. Steven Brown and others have now proposed that both song and speech "arose from a common communicative system, 'musilanguage.' When they diverged, language became more important for exact communication, and music came to play a predominantly social role, to do with the bonding and unity of the group."

I love odd facts and obscure lore, so was delighted to learn the history of Anabaptists, with their return to the ancient practice of baptism by immersion -- the clue is in the name. Something else I'd been unaware of was that in most species, only the males sing. That includes not only birds, but amphibians like frogs and toads, some reptiles, and mammals including some mice and gibbons.
From this book I also learned that chimps travel some distance to pile stones under certain trees, which arguably constitutes ritual. Another odd fact is that oak trees, which were sacred to the Druids, are more often hit by lightning than other trees. Perhaps this was what caused Druids to revere them as the bridge between earth and sky. After all, lightning does quite literally connect the two realms.

One more surprise was that Muslims at Mecca circumambulate the Kabbah in a counterclockwise direction; this is different from the clockwise circumambulation that is carried out at most other places of pilgrimage.

As in his previous book The Science Delusion, Sheldrake criticizes mainstream science for failing to be open to possibilities. Instead, most mainstream scientists have embraced materialism, though it is a quasi-religion, filled with beliefs and assumptions. Materialists assume that consciousness "is nothing but the activity of brains" although this does not really explain the 'hard problem' of the nature of consciousness. Unlike current scientific materialism, religions are founded on the assumption that consciousness transcends the human level...all religions assume that consciousness is more extensive than brain activity. Plenty of food for thought here. Including the question of where that thought is taking place: is it in the brain or beyond it? By providing questions such as this to ponder, Sheldrake has created an absolutely fascinating book.