Following in his Father’s Footsteps


(photo taken directly from Rupert Sheldrake’s website)


A Tribute to a Father and his Son.


Part 1: The Father


I first discovered Rupert Sheldrake’s work by reading his first two books: “A New Science of Life” written in 1981 followed by “The Presence of the Past.” These two books changed my life because they validated my experiential reality and demonstrated that my personal experiences were located in a much larger context. I was not imagining things I felt or dreamed!


(At the time I first read these books I was in personal crisis. I was struggling to accept that I was living the shadow side of Rupert’s hypothesis of morphic resonance as a rejected member of my own family. This rejection had so little to do with who I was that it left me paralyzed and numb, least until I began to sense that my situation was rooted deep in a very dark past I knew nothing about.)


Nature does have a kind of memory that we can tap into in unexplained ways… the past intersects with the future through resonance which can occur instantly either through our mind/and or body. What this means practically is that we can communicate with those who have gone before or with other species as long as we have a relationship with them. Rupert says like attracts like. I would also add that it is my experience that the opposite can occur. Extremes in relationship carry a charge. It’s the strength of relationship positive or negative, an open mind, and sensitivity to the unknown, that seem to determine whether we will be able understand that we are having these experiences. Only then can we begin to separate past from present.


In his visionary hypothesis Rupert Sheldrake describes the process called morphic resonance, in which the forms and behaviors of the past shape living organisms in the present. How this happens is not understood but Rupert suggests that telepathic communication is probably the means by which this communication occurs almost instantly. (Quantum non – locality is another possibility.) There is nothing paranormal about telepathy. Rupert believes as I do that animals developed telepathy to keep in touch with each other. Telepathy developed as a survival technique and anyone that has a close relationship with an animal is privy to this kind of communication although it is still dismissed by materialistic science as wishful thinking or – fill in the blank – for some other equally stupid reason (what would happen if we actually acknowledged that this kind of communication routinely occurs? – we’d have to make a radical change in the way we treat animals for one thing). So many scientists have completely closed minds – a kind of tunnel vision. The “either or principle” – it’s either “hard science” or its just a “story/myth” that can’t be quantified – is still the norm. “Prove it” is one aggressive stance that is taken by some, an attitude I find revolting.


The late Sir John Maddocks was Rupert’s long standing critic and the author of an infamous editorial in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 1981 over A New Science of Life, in which he wrote “This infuriating tract… is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.” Maddock’s denunciation was followed by a series of hostile reviews in Nature and in British newspapers.


In an interview broadcast on BBC television in 1994, Maddocks said: “Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy.”


Naturally, cowardly conventional scientists from countless disciplines jumped on the bandwagon because this was followed by another series of hostile criticism by the entire scientific community.


This brilliant visionary scientist became known as a radical fringe pseudo scientist who didn’t adhere to “the man against nature paradigm” arguing instead that all Nature was alive and interconnected and that the past intersected with the present.


To make matters worse, Sheldrake also refused to split science from spirituality a fact that also enraged atheistic materialists, biologists, and scientists alike. This trend remains current today as scientists from all disciplines split spirituality from science, often demonizing the former. Sheldrake has the immense courage to maintain that a “both and” perspective can be applied to both science and spirituality, and in his latest book “Science and Spiritual Practices” argues for what he knows to be true, namely that we cannot split science from spirituality because the earth is alive and sentient and science and spirituality are two lens that reveal they are parts of the same whole.


Amazingly this man of great kindness, deep humility, and integrity (I know him and his family personally) persevered against all the odds continuing his research, submerging himself in rigorous experimentation and went on to author many more books. He was ridiculed and condemned, and even shot in Texas for giving a talk on animal telepathy.


I remember one of my graduate professors dismissing Rupert’s ideas with disgusting hubris claiming that “science didn’t need his hypothesis – DNA can tell us everything we needed to know about heredity.” I heard that same argument robotically repeated by mainstream materialistic/mechanistic/ atheistic scientists for years and years – and most astonishingly by people who actually refused read Rupert’s work.


Oh, how pleased I was to read about epigenetics which validates that DNA is NOT the only way human behavior is passed on. Rupert stated years ago that DNA only codes for protein, not for form as part of his hypothesis. We can and do inherit the characteristics and behavior of the family systems’ we came out of. The study of epigenetics moves us on step closer to Rupert’s theory of morphic resonance, once dismissed with such ridicule.


When I read The Rebirth of Nature in the late eighties I knew that the naturalist in me had found “home” in western science even though by then Rupert had been banned from the scientific community by his so called radical ideas. Sheldrake argues and demonstrates our intimate relationship with the universe through open minded science — he believes that we are a part of a breathing, living, thinking cosmos and that intelligence is a pervasive reality inseparably one with nature. In The Rebirth of Nature Sheldrake urges us to move beyond the centuries-old mechanistic view of nature, explaining in lucid terms why we can no longer regard the world as inanimate and purposeless. Through an astute critique of the dominant scientific paradigm, Sheldrake shows recent developments in science itself have brought us to the threshold of a new synthesis in which traditional wisdom, intuitive experience, and scientific insight can be mutually enriching.


I have been following Rupert’s career and submitting my own experiences with animals (and some with humans) to his data bank for the past twenty plus years. In the process I have come to deeply respect this man not only because of his visionary ideas but because he has somehow persevered in the face of such hostility becoming a model for me to emulate. When I first met him on Cortez Island, B.C. I walked into a room where people were conversing at a table in a far corner with their heads turned away. Instantly, I knew, though it was impossible to identify the people by sight, that the back of the head I felt compelled to stare at belonged to Rupert. That  very second Rupert turned around to look at me and our eyes met. I will never forget the moment. I am so grateful that at this conference I had an opportunity to get to know Rupert’s wife and family, and to thank him for validating my ideas, helping me to believe in myself and for changing the way I perceived the world opening my mind to a whole myriad of new possibilities. I have been blessed by having such an extraordinary mentor.

What follows is a biographical portrait of some of Rupert’s accomplishments:



Since 1981, he has continued research on developmental and cell biology. He has also investigated unexplained aspects of animal behavior, including how pigeons find their way home, the telepathic abilities of dogs, cats and other animals, and the apparent abilities of animals to anticipate earthquakes and tsunamis. He subsequently studied similar phenomena in people, including the sense of being stared at, telepathy between mothers and babies, telepathy in connection with telephone calls, and premonitions. Although some of these areas overlap the field of parapsychology, he approaches them as a biologist, and bases his research on natural history and experiments under natural conditions, as opposed to laboratory studies.

The Science Delusion in the UK and Science Set Free in the US, examines the ten dogmas of modern science, and shows how they can be turned into questions that open up new vistas of scientific possibility. This book received the Book of the Year Award from the British Scientific and Medical Network. His most recent book Science and Spiritual Practices is about rediscovering new ways of connecting with the more-than-human world through direct experience.


He received the 2014 Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, a prize established by the Doshi family “to honor an individual or organization dedicated to fostering understanding between cultures, peoples and disciplines.” In 2015, in Venice, Italy, he was awarded the first Lucia Torri Cianci prize for innovative thinking.


Part 2

The Son

I met Merlin and his brother Cosmo, (a brilliant musician) at Cortez Island when Merlin was an undergraduate. What I remember best was his penetrating dark eyes and his ease around strangers. Polite and friendly, the two brothers were off to an island party to play music (the whole family is musically gifted) so we spoke only briefly and yet I was struck by that same warmth and genuine kindness that made their father Rupert so easy to be around.


Merlin Sheldrake graduated from Cambridge in biological sciences history and philosophy of science. He completed his PhD on the ecology of fungal networks at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama where he conducted extensive fieldwork as a Smithsonian Research Fellow. Merlin received a triple first in Biological Sciences and starred First in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University where he was a prize winning scholar. He is 28 years old.

Dr. Merlin Sheldrake’s experience in the area of ecology, mycology, botany, history and philosophy of science give him a broad perspective from which to write his forthcoming book on mycelium: Entangled Life: Fungal Networks and Intimacies which I cannot wait to read.



The relationship between these mycorrhizal fungi and the plants they connect is now known to be ancient (around four hundred and fifty million years old) and largely one of mutualism—a subset of symbiosis in which both organisms benefit from their association. In the case of the mycorrhizae, the fungi siphon off food from the trees, taking some of the carbon-rich sugar that they produce during photosynthesis. The plants, in turn, obtain nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that the fungi have acquired from the soil, by means of enzymes that the trees do not possess.


The revelation of the Wood Wide Web’s existence, and the increased understanding of its functions, raises big questions—about where species begin and end; about whether a forest might be better imagined as a single super -organism, rather than a grouping of independent individualistic ones; and about what trading, sharing, or even friendship might mean among plants. “Whenever I need to explain my research to someone quickly, I just tell them I work on the social networks of plants,” Sheldrake says.

As an undergraduate studying natural sciences at Cambridge, Sheldrake read the 1988 paper “Mycorrhizal Links Between Plants: Their Functioning and Ecological Significance,” by the plant scientist E. I. Newman, in which Newman argued boldly for the existence of a “mycelial network” linking plants. “If this phenomenon is widespread,” Newman wrote, “it could have profound implications for the functioning of ecosystems.”

Those implications fascinated Sheldrake. He had long loved fungi, which seemed to him possessed of superpowers. He knew that they could turn rocks to rubble, move with eerie swiftness both above ground and under it, reproduce horizontally, and digest food outside their bodies via excreted enzymes. He was aware that their toxins could kill people, and that their psychoactive chemicals could induce hallucinogenic states. After reading Newman’s paper, he understood that fungi could also allow plants to communicate with one another.

“All of these trees have mycorrhizal fungi growing into their roots,” Sheldrake said. “You could imagine the fungi themselves as forming a massive underground tree, or as a cobweb of fine filaments, acting as a sort of prosthesis to the trees, a further root system, extending outwards into the soil, acquiring nutrients and floating them back to the plants, as the plants fix carbon in their leaves and send sugar to their roots, and out into the fungi. And this is all happening right under our feet.”

Hyphae will be growing around in the decomposing matter of half-rotting leaves, rotting twigs and logs and then the mycorrhizal fungi grow into hotspots, Sheldrake explains. In addition to penetrating the tree roots, the hyphae also interpenetrate each other—mycorrhizal fungi on the whole don’t have divisions between their cells. “This interpenetration permits the wildly promiscuous horizontal transfer of genetic material,” Sheldrake finishes.

A central debate over the Wood Wide Web concerns the language used to describe the transactions it enables, which suggest two competing visions of the network: the socialist forest, in which trees act as caregivers to one another, with the well-off supporting the needy, and the capitalist forest, in which all entities are acting out of self-interest within a competitive system. Sheldrake is especially exasperated by what he called the “super-neoliberal capitalist” discourse of the biological free market.

Working with local field assistants while obtaining his PhD Sheldrake carried out a painstaking census of the soil in a series of plots, sequencing the DNA of hundreds of root samples taken both from green plants and mycohets, a kind of plant that has no chlorophyll.

Sheldrake became interested in mycoheterotrophs, or “mycohets” for short. Because mycohets are plants that lack chlorophyll, they are unable to photosynthesize, making them entirely reliant on the fungal network for their provision of carbon. “These little green-less plants plug into the network, and somehow derive everything from it without paying anything back, at least in the usual coin,” Sheldrake exclaims. “They don’t play by the normal rules of symbiosis, but we can’t prove they’re parasites.” Sheldrake focused on a genus of mycohets called Voyria, part of the gentian family. One of the reasons Sheldrake loves these plants is that they are harder to understand, and more mysterious. He calls them the hackers of the Wood Wide Web.

His research allowed him to determine which species of fungi were connecting which plants, and thereby to make an unprecedentedly detailed map of the Panama jungle’s social network.

For each formal scientific paper he published about mycorrhizae, he plans to publish the paper’s “dark twin,” in which he plans to describe the “messy network of crazy things that underlies every piece of cool, clean science, but that you aren’t usually allowed to see—the fortunate accidents of field work, the tangential serendipitous observation that sets off a thought train, the boredom, the chance encounters.” No doubt the Voyria will find a way to become one of the dark twins.

When you look at the network of fungi Sheldrake states it starts to look back at you! This remark sounds so much like something his father would say that I have to laugh. Everything is predicated on relationship. Both Father and Son are brilliant cutting edge scientists who I hope together, will continue to shift the present destructive “man over nature” paradigm into one that has interconnection, caring, and cooperation at its core.

Exploring the mysteries of the Earth and Cosmos as both father and son continue to do is rigorous open-minded scientific inquiry that could lead to a new way humans perceive themselves in relationship to our planet and cosmos, penetrating more deeply into the wonders inherent in “Great Mystery” through direct experience and rigorous scientific experimentation. Ironically, keen observation, understanding that non – human life forms and the entire Earth and Cosmos are our spiritual and scientific teachers is a practice Indigenous people have been engaged in for millennia.

In this sense the work of both Rupert and Merlin have the capacity to return us to our lost beginnings and open up almost unimaginable possibilities for a new future if only we will join them on this journey.




Normally I spend little time highlighting credentials because I have always believed that it was the person that mattered, not the degrees he or she amassed.

But in this case I feel differently because my own life journey has been tied to that of Rupert Sheldrake’s over a period of almost 40 years. After discovering that this remarkable open-minded scientist/naturalist was asking the same questions I was afraid to voice I was horrified to learn how viciously his ideas were attacked and continued to be dismissed by the scientific establishment. (In my personal life and through my own writing I have encountered the same resistance and skepticism.) This condemnation continues among skeptics today who refute Rupert’s visionary work as fraudulent because he dared to stand up for open – minded scientific inquiry and refused to be bludgeoned by a crumbling dogmatic atheistic scientific establishment. We would not be in global environmental crisis today if we had listened to what Rupert Sheldrake had to say 40 years ago. Once, I was in awe of science as a discipline, not so today. Materialistic atheistic science is the myth of our time, not Eternal Truth.

When I first read an article praising Merlin’s groundbreaking work article in The New Yorker I experienced pure jubilance. Perhaps Rupert’s work will remain controversial but his son is in the thick of it getting attention from every direction! I feel a personal sense of vindication for them (and for me) because without having Rupert as his father Merlin might not have had the courage to explore the mysteries of Nature with the confidence that has led this 28 year old man into uncharted  territory with such enthusiasm. I look forward with great anticipation to further publications from a father and son team who are changing the way some humans see and understand the world. With scientists like this working so diligently to change human perceptions of how the Earth and Cosmos works and how relationship and interconnection are fundamental aspects of both I can even feel a spark of hope.

Deep Time



(This photo requires some explanation – I am living at the edge of a river to the east. To the west I see this mesa. Here in New Mexico the Tewa speaking Pueblo peoples honor Avanyu, the Horned Serpent who is the manifestation of the Spirit of Life living in the flowing waters of the river (which is dangerously low from drought) and falling as rain or snow. His image is pecked into the canyon walls (or painted as a pictograph) and on the mesas that overlook the river. On this particular mesa there is a powerful petroglyph of Avanyu accompanied by other serpents. Although I have never been able to climb this steep mesa my friend Iren is a mountain climber and scales cliffs without effort and she has shown me exactly where this petroglyph is and has pictures of Avanyu which have burned themselves into my mind. Early in the pre -dawn hours I visit the river’s edge and acknowledge the power of Avanyu’s presence… Turning around I imagine I can also see Avanyu pecked into the rock high above me. Being in this Presence each morning, I experience a moment of Deep Time.)

Lately I have been using the phrase “Deep Time” in some of my writing. It occurred to me that I really didn’t know what I meant by the phrase beyond sensing/experiencing the spiritual aspect of it in those moments when I enter that space in between worlds where “Now is all that is”. I will not be covering the spiritual aspect of Deep Time in this essay. Engaging with this phrase is my first attempt to answer this question about Deep Time in other more concrete ways.

I am drawing on three interdisciplinary fields and my own ideas when I use this phrase. One discipline is Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic fields and the use of morphic resonance to transmit information/energy. Morphic fields are biological, psychological, mental, emotional, social, spiritual fields that can be tapped into by all species and across generations by living beings in order to receive/transmit information and energy. This theory works outside space/time with resonance being a central to its existence. The closer the relationship the easier it is to resonate with another living being. This theory is considered controversial in mechanistic western science as it is practiced today, and has been dismissed as irrelevant because “it isn’t needed”.


The second discipline I am drawing on is Carl Jung’s use of archetypes and fields, also controversial and totally dismissed even by the American Psychological Association. Archetypes are patterns of energy that carry information that also work outside the acceptable space/time constraints. Archetypal fields are like morphic fields in that they convey energy and information between species and across generations by pulling persons or cultures into specific fields of influence, but this theory is restricted to psychological patterns of energy, although it is compatible with Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance. It doesn’t include the other areas listed above.


A third discipline is that of field theory itself. Like the others mentioned above field theory contains energy but information is not part of most hypotheses. There are so many different variations within this discipline that I encourage the reader to research this body of information independently.


As an example I use the unified field theory of particle physics, which attempts to describe all fundamental forces and the relationships between elementary particles in terms of a single theoretical framework that has also been dubbed ‘a theory of everything’ at least on a mathematical micro –level (subatomic). Even though this unified theory appears to have parallels on a macro level we refuse to accept it at the human level which is in the middle of the other two! I am convinced this attitude of dismissal is pure scientific hubris and the result of our destructive world politics. If we accepted that relationship is fundamental to all parts of Nature/Universe humans would be FORCED to make radical changes.


In my way of thinking Nature taps into Deep Time because all of Nature has a kind of memory that resonates through and across time, but is not dependent upon linear time as humans experience it as Rupert Sheldrake states.


To have an experience of Deep Time one has to have a relationship with another person, family, or another species. I think humans most commonly enter Deep Time with relatives and people they love either dead or alive when identifying with “family” and ancestors through these different layers of biological/psychological/mental/emotional “fields” through feeling.


We have been taught that our DNA carries all the information necessary for new life. However, DNA is a protein, and proteins do not code for the form, personality, or gifts and disabilities that a person may develop. If we allow for the possibility of memory in Nature then it becomes understandable that a person develops into who s/he is partly because of DNA heritage and partly because s/he can tap into her family’s field through her mind and/or body.


As an example, let me use my friend Iren who is an incredibly gifted artist that works in every medium I can think of. She is also the daughter of a man who was an artist, although I believe Iren’s talent surpasses that of her father’s. Certainly, Iren carries her father’s DNA, but an artistic gift doesn’t develop out of a protein. The current theory of epigenetics suggests that characteristics/ behavior etc. can also be inherited from parent to child, a theory that was dismissed with scorn until quite recently. The resurrection of this theoretical perspective blurs the dogmatic western scientific belief that DNA is solely responsible for how an individual develops and brings us much closer to the idea that there is also a memory inherent in all Nature that can be tapped into on a biological, psychological, mental, emotional and physical level. Individual species all draw on a collective memory and also contribute to it so it evolves, or is capable of evolving.


I think it’s necessary to re-iterate that tapping into Memory in Nature is dependent upon the strength of the emotional connection between people or other species. This can be either a positive or negative emotional occurrence. In my experience interconnection occurs through the mind or body, sometimes both. Like attracts like, and the same is true for polar opposites. A negative emotional connection has as much power to influence as a positive connection does. I give as an example the power of hatred to destroy, or the universal fear of the “evil eye” which is based on the idea that the strength of a person’s negative power can harm another.


I think that animals, plants, and trees routinely tap into their own multilayered biological, social, mental, behavioral and emotional fields for information and perhaps even more importantly for guidance and love. I give as an example the fact that some tree stumps in untouched forests remain alive for centuries after having been cut down. How can this be?


We now know that these “elders” are being fed water and nutrients by their relatives through extensive root systems assisted by fungi underground (who are more like insects than plants). Why would the younger trees bother to keep feeding a severed trunk without limbs unless there was a good reason to do so?


Author Peter Wolhlleben posits that these trees need the support of their elders – I would add that this emotional component goes completely unnoticed in non – human species unless one is a person who has developed intimate relationships with particular plants, trees, forests, deserts, and animals, both wild and tame. Most people ridicule people like myself who discovered love and found their “family” roots in Nature.


Deep Time is not species specific. On this blog I write again and again about my close relationships with plants and animals (tame and wild) on both a personal and collective level. My last blog entry on passionflowers is an experience of the former.


My dreams about Nature are deadly, repeating the themes of lack of water and dying trees, animals that are disappearing. In these dreams my grief is overwhelming and I am powerless to intervene. I believe I am literally dreaming for the Earth. This is the collective insanity of Climate Change, manifesting through one person’s dreaming body (And I am not alone). In addition, during my day life I live this reality as a naturalist and Earth Advocate. I have not been free of these dreams for thirty years and they are intensifying, I believe, because I am living through an age of  Earth extinction.


Deep Time is multi-layered and multi-valenced. It has (personal) biological, behavioral, emotional, psychological, mental, social, as well as spiritual aspects. Because its not space/time dependent (it can occur almost instantly), past present and future can be experienced simultaneously in Deep Time, and the passage of time as humans experience it can also be reversed. An example of the former is the psychic experience of presentiment in which the individual has a bodily sensation that something is going to happen in the near or distant future and it does. I routinely have this kind of experience through mindless fear, feelings in my body, or through dreaming the future.


Deep Time also has a cultural aspect. A good example of this is what happened to many folks on 9/11. People had all kinds of frightening experiences. I for example, was in the middle of a painting and stopped to take a walk in the woods. When I returned I suddenly had the compulsion to paint the sky in my painting brilliant orange although I had previously planned that I would paint it blue. Three hours after I finished my sky, I discovered that I had painted it during the time of the explosion in NYC. My sense is that this collective aspect may also sometimes be dependent upon the strength of the individual’s emotions around what is happening. I am very opposed to war, and fear its deadly consequences; with this kind of emotional fear dominating I might be more sensitive. Painting the sky an explosive color mirrored what was happening in the collective.


There is also a teleological aspect to deep time. We are pulled into these stories or “fields” often against our will, for example, repeating deadly childhood experiences in adulthood. On a more positive note a cottonwood seed grows into its tree not just because it has its parents’ DNA but also because there is an invisible cottonwood field that is calling it into being through its cottonwood form.


I finish this exploration with some tentative conclusions. Whatever Deep Time is, Memory in Nature is fundamental to its existence. The strength of relationship is also fundamental to entering Deep Time. We also enter fields of influence when we enter this space. Deep Time is not species specific; In fact, animals, trees, fungi, plants probably live closer or reside permanently in Deep Time; it is more difficult for humans to enter this space. Deep Time is multilayered and multi-valenced and it is not space/time dependent. Information and energy are relayed almost instantly. Deep Time has both personal and impersonal dimensions and it is teleological by the nature of its existence. Deep Time is not static and allows for the possibility of evolving new patterns of human and non human behavior – for better or worse.


Deep Time is also about entering “a Great Mystery.”

Precognition, Telepathy, Presentiment, and the End of the Year




(painting by Susan Boulet)










Today, they do.
































I know I certainly did.























