Philosophical Imaginatrix: The Astonishing Theory of Morphic Resonance

In 1981, Rupert Sheldrake wrote a controversial book called 'A New Science of Life', where he introduced a concept called Morphic Resonance. The word 'Morphic' comes from the Greek word 'Morphe' which means 'Form'. Morphic Resonance according to Sheldrake is the process by which organisms inherit a memory from previous systems. The organism self organizes itself based on the data from the past. A habit of the nature which connects dots of the evolution. The Morphic Fields are responsible for organizing the forms, patterns and structure of the systems. These systems might be amino acids and proteins or plants and animals or crystals and minerals or brains and minds. A field that makes our future possible because of the past. This is similar to the Jungian concept of 'Archetype and the Collective Unconscious'. 

Our memories will be present and stored in the biology of our future generations. We inherit biological complexity of our ancestors. And that way we evolve. Our genes are coded with informations that are needed for our brain to function in a best way possible. And we store the epigenetic changes happening to us. And it happens in not just an individual scale, but a collective scale of entire species. This makes a collective memory of our specie to function in the future. 

Sheldrake explain that-

"All self-organising systems are wholes made up of parts which are in turn lower-level wholes themselves – such as organelles in cells, cells in tissues, tissues in organs, organs in organisms, organisms in social groups. At each level, the morphic field gives each whole its characteristic properties, and coordinates the constituent parts."

Those fields which makes it possible to develop and maintain the forms of organisms are called 'Morphogenetic Fields'. Beyond this there is much larger fields called 'Morphic fields'. These morphic fields might consist of a mind field which makes our culture and society possible. Hence we are the outcome of this collective fields. Sheldrake explains that the morphic fields work inside and around the organism (system). And they are probabilistic in nature, just like the quantum fields. An inherent determinism rules the system and it impose certain order or restrict certain order according to its need. This field also evolves overtime. I feel, the more it moves ahead in time, the more connected and complex it becomes. A fish swims in a pattern nor in a random order because of the information stored in such fields. Or the movements of the bird. A deeper harmony exists. And this is because of the morphic fields. 

Morphic fields are memories of the past. Our behaviour is based on what has happened to us as animals in the past. And because things are repetitive, the patterns of our collective behaviour becomes a habitual process. Hence the force that is exerted by the morphic field is the habitual force. This fields become stronger because of repetition.  Sheldrake puts forth the concept that:

"All nature is inherently habitual."

The laws that governs the nature is hence a habitual occurrence. This also leads us to believe that our universe is an organic union. And it also evolves in the basis of the fields it gathers. Nature is the outcome of the habit of the universe (something which must be inbuilt). The 'Morphic Resonance', provides the inherent memory to all systems in all degrees of complexities. A dog behaves like a dog because of that inherent memory. This is the collective unconscious that Carl Gustav Jung is talking about. An unconscious force that controls us and our behaviours. And such resonance is available all around the nature and its processes. From a quartz crystal to an atom of lead or muscle cells, all are governed by the morphic fields. A sort of habit happens in a billion year of planetary/ cosmic evolution. And a certain 'law', which is the memory of the field determines the nature of the subject and the object. 

Sheldrake provides a very beautiful example for this:(imagine this)

"When a new chemical compound is synthesized by research chemists and crystallised, it may take a long time for a crystal to form for the first time. There is no preexisting morphic field for the lattice structure. But when the first crystals form, they will make it easier for similar crystals to appear anywhere in the world. The more often the compound is crystallised in one place, the easier it should be to crystallise elsewhere. New compounds do indeed tend to crystallise more easily the more often they are made. Chemists usually explain this effect in terms of crystal “seeds” from the new crystals spreading around the world as invisible dust particles in the atmosphere, or chemists learning from others how to do it. But the hypothesis of morphic fields predicts that this should happen anyway under standardised conditions, even if dust particles are filtered out of the air."

This understanding is not a new understanding. In 1878, Samuel Butler, wrote a book called 'Life and Habit', where Butler suggested that 'life' as a whole evolved from an inherent unconscious memories, habits and the instincts, it had the memories of the embryos development. It had all the reflections of the past as an inherent memory. He further pointed that even atoms and molecules must be made from inherent memories. 

If you seriously sit and start questioning the nature of biology, you find it hard to answer any question. Why does an embryo get fertilized? Why does it fertilize the way it does? What makes it take such shapes? Sheldrake points out that these formative causation of the fields are the reason for our biological occurrences. Sheldrake also points out that DNA makes the product but not the pattern. He points out that-

Analogously, DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth. There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body. To see this more clearly, think of your arms and legs. The form of the arms and legs is different; it's obvious that they have a different shape from each other. Yet the chemicals in the arms and legs are identical. The muscles are the same, the nerve cells are the same, the skin cells are the same, and the DNA is the same in all the cells of the arms and legs. In fact, the DNA is the same in all the cells of the body. DNA alone cannot explain the difference inform; something else is necessary to explain form.

What is the proof of Morphic Resonance?

Sheldrake gives us a very beautiful example for this. 

Because of the German occupation of Holland, milk delivery ceased during 1939-40. Milk deliveries did not resume until 1948. Since bluetits usually live only two to three years, there probably were no bluetits alive in 1948 who had been alive when milk was last delivered. Yet when milk deliveries resumed in 1948, the opening of milk bottles by bluetits sprang up rapidly in quite separate places in Holland and spread extremely rapidly until, within a year or two, it was once again universal. The behavior spread much more rapidly and cropped up independently much more frequently the second time round than the first time. This example demonstrates the evolutionary spread of a new habit which is probably not genetic but rather depends on a kind of collective memory due to morphic resonance.

Thus it can be observed that what we call heredity is not just dependent on the DNA. The DNA makes sure that it builds the cement and the blocks needed to build a house (organism). A morphic resonance is need to use that cement and blocks to make the house. Which means that heredity has two forms: one genetic and one morphic resonance. A protein synthesis is carried out which is used to create a system: its forms and behaviours. 

Some of the most significant quotes on Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields:

1. If somebody learns a new skill, say windsurfing, then the more people that learn it, the easier it becomes for everyone else because of morphic resonance. However, if you train rats to learn a new trick in one place, like Los Angeles, then rats all over the world should be able to learn the trick more quickly because the first group of rats learned it. That’s what I’m saying morphic resonance does. It’s the kind of interconnection between all similar organisms across space and time. It works from the past and connects like a kind of collective memory, and it interconnects all the members of a species.

2. What you do, what you say and what you think can influence other people by morphic resonance. So we’re more responsible for our actions, words and thoughts on this principle than we would otherwise be. There is no immoral filter in morphic resonance, which means that we have to be more careful about what we are thinking if we are concerned about the affect we have on others.”

3. An important aspect of morphic resonance is that we’re interconnected with other members of social groups. Social groups also have morphic fields, for example a flock of birds, or a school of fish, or an ant colony. The individuals within the larger social groups and the larger social groups themselves have their own morphic fields, their own organizing patterns. The same is true of humans. People form all sorts of social groups within modern society, such as a football team, for example. Each player in the team is working as part of a larger whole — the team — and the team works together to score goals. The connections between members of social groups link them together through the morphic field. They’re interconnected through this field and the field is an invisible interconnection that links them. It continues to do so even when they’re far away. The next time you are far away from somebody you know well, think about them and form the intention to telephone them. They may just pick up on that thought and start thinking about you. Then all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s that person. I call that telephone telepathy, and it is the most common kind of telepathy in the modern world. It’s just another way in which we are all interconnected.