Rupert Sheldrake on Materialist Assumptions (#90)

In this episode, we discuss:

• Obstacles to the science of spiritual practice - limitations of a materialist view
• Engagement with the Indian tradition and how it helped him return to Christianity
• Intention of a pilgrimage and how it differs from being a tourist
• The interplay of form and energy and the common ground with a Trinitarian view
• Human genome project - what we know and don't know (e.g. shape, form, instincts)
• The brain as a mediator and not the cause
• His book Science and Spiritual Practicesand how science helps validate seven practices on which all religions are built and spiritual practices in a secular world

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author of more than eighty-five technical papers and eight books, including Science and Spiritual Prcatices, and the co-author of six books. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Frank Know Fellow at Harvard. He worked in India as Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute ICRISAT, and also lived for two years in the Benedictine ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu. From 2005-2010, he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for the study of unexplained human and animal abilities, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and of Schumacher College in Devon, England. He lives in London and is married to Jill Purce, with whom he has two sons. His web site is www.sheldrake.org.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.