Radionik Verlag - IRT - Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields

3.2. Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields

Rupert Sheldrake describes the special way of resonance employed by the IRT as "morphic resonance" or form resonance.

Rupert Sheldrake, an English biologist, has developed a theory of so-called morphic fields. Morphogenesis describes the creation of form in nature. This theory, which Sheldrake has expounded in a number of books and scientific articles, is currently the subject of serious scientific research. The IRT uses this theory to explain the way resonance therapy works. How did Sheldrake arrive at his theory?

As a researcher, Sheldrake hit upon a number of puzzling phenomena in nature that science can't explain. For instance, although we know that a single cell contains the genetic information necessary to multiply into a whole organism, natural science is still at a loss to explain why the ultimate form an organism takes is always the same.

Sheldrake has advanced the analogy of a television set. The origin of the images on the screen are not actually in the television. Rather, these images are transmitted by radio wave, are received by an antenna and finally converted to pictures on a television screen. In a similar way, genes provide the building blocks for a body but the organising principle that arranges the blocks into a body is something that does not lie within thes genes.

According to Sheldrake, the principle that organizes matter is a morphic field, or form field. Matter comes into being through a field that forms matter, somewhat in the way that a field around a magnet arranges iron particles into a distinct pattern. Every organisation corresponds to a particular field, from the highest level of complexity down to the simplest atom.

Sheldrake maintains that evolution should be seen in the light of morphic fields and their influence on matter. Because reality constantly evolves, morphic fields can not be fixed, or rigid. There is constant interplay between a form field and the organism on whose structure it is created. It follows that a morphic field gains in strength as the organisms that relate to it grow in number. Field strength (attraction) is determined by the number of times the field manifests itself (repetition).

The relation between a morphic field and physical substance is analogical to resonance. In the case of a tuning fork, acoustic resonance involves the transfer of mechanical air vibration. Morphic resonance on the other hand, involves the transfer of information. In this line of thought, an organism's build and the way it functions are based on information transfer from a morphic field.

We are all familiar with acoustic resonance through our sense of hearing. Physicists have knowledge of electromagnetic and electronic spin-resonance operating in macro- and microscopic/subatomic fields respectively. Morphic resonance is believed to work in a similar way. Once established through individual structures, morphic fields will induce resonance with similar members of the same group who are accordingly named resonators. Such resonance gains in strength as the sending and receiving structures show greater similarity.

An example:

In 1921, birdwatchers in Southhampton observed local blue tits as they pulled caps off milk bottles and drank the top of the milk. Blue tits in adjacent communities soon caught on, which one might say is simply imitation. These birds however, have a territory of no more than a few kilometers. If this learned behaviour was merely imitation then this behaviour would have spread over the country only gradually. In actuality, this new blue tit habit spread rapidly all over England. What's more, it occurred in Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands too. During the Second World War, there were no milk bottles for a number of years. But the moment new bottles were delivered, a new generation of tits started performing the same trick again, even though they had never seen a milk bottle before. (Fig. 3)

In this example given by Sheldrake, blue tits are resonators. These birds get the notion of investigating milk bottles through resonance with a morphic field that contains this information.

From the moment of its making, a morphic field influences the form and behaviour of the organism and its descendants. A field will store new information in the course of time. In this way, a morphic field is a sort of collective memory for all of its kind. The influence of the field on blue tit behaviour, field strength or attraction, grows everytime a tit performs the milk bottle trick (repetition). Newly-born blue tits catch on to the trick ever more quickly, until it is matter of habit for blue tits everywhere.

Sheldrake therefore holds that there are no eternal laws in nature. Laws should rather be taken as natural habits which develop gradually and are strengthened by repetition. Present behaviour occurs to a great extent because it has occurred in the past. Take the habit of smoking. A chain smoker is inclined to take another cigarette because he has done so previously, not because some eternal law induces a need to smoke. There is no law of addiction which exists as something inevitable and external to the smoker.

It appears that not only the entire blue tit group resonates with the form field, but a part of the bird, for instance a feather, will resonate as well. In itself this is quite logical, because a feather is part of the same system. As we saw earlier, Adams' blood spot and Uptons leaf resonated with the form field of the patient and the tree respectively. In both cases, blood spot and leaf are resonators.

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