Seven Ways in which Minds Extend Beyond Brains
I suggest that minds are not confined to the insides of heads. I think they extend beyond brains in at least seven different ways. I start with the obvious and undeniable extension of minds through culture.
1. Culture
All cultures and languages, all arts, all technology, all science, all buildings and furniture, all cities, all temples and churches, all tools and machines, all clothes and all meals are in minds before they become objective, external realities. Books, smartphones, social media, the buildings around us, gardens and the landscape shaped by farming are all products of minds and extensions of minds, and in turn affect our minds. Our minds dwell in a cultural world which is an externalisation of many minds, within which we all exist like fish in the sea. This is all so obvious we usually take it for granted.
We are not the only animals that modify the world around us through our minds, or in a mindlike way. Beavers build dams, weaverbirds nests, termite colonies mounds and spiders webs. But we do it on the largest possible scale. Our minds affect all life on Earth.
2. In bodies
Our minds extend throughout our bodies.
Materialists assume that all our experiences are inside our brains; they think that if you feel a pain in your big toe, the pain is not really in your big toe but in your brain, which produces a sensation of pain which is, in some mysterious way, “referred” to the toe.
By contrast, I am suggesting that our body image is where it seems to be, in our bodies. A pain in my big toe is in my big toe. The mind pervades the body.
The contrast between these views is thrown into sharp relief in the case of phantom limbs. Amputees feel their phantom arm where their arm used to be, and they can move it around. After an amputation they have to remember that it is indeed a phantom. Some amputees say that soon after their operation when they heard the phone ring, they reached out to pick it up, and then realised they could not. Their phantom arm felt so real. However, a phantom arm can do things that an ordinary arm cannot; it can be pushed through solid objects like walls and doors.
I suggest that the body image is the morphic field of the body experienced from within. Morphic fields are form-shaping fields with and inherent memory. In the case of a phantom arm, the field of the arm remains even when the material limb has gone, and this arm field is where the amputee experiences the arm as being, even though there is no longer a physical arm in that place.
The conventional view is that the phantom arm is a phantom in the brain; the phantom arm is not where it seems to be but is “referred” to that place.
This question can be explored experimentally. In my own tests, I had an amputee with a phantom arm behind a closed door. On the door there were six different regions numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, marked on the door on both sides. By a throw of a dice, one of these regions was selected at random, say 4, and the amputee was asked to push his phantom arm through this panel; thus on the other side of the door there was an invisible phantom arm sticking out of panel 4. One at a time, we invited people who practice “subtle energy” therapies to tell us where the phantom arm was. They felt all six regions to try and find where the phantom arm was protruding. There was a 1 in 6 chance of getting it right by mere guessing, but in the experiments we have done so far, the responses were very significantly above chance, suggesting that it was possible to detect the phantom arm. I think the subtle energy practitioners were detecting is the field of the missing arm. This body field, which we experience from within, pervades the whole body and continues to exist even after an amputation. The mind pervades the body field and is not confined to the brain.
Interestingly, when amputees are fitted with a false arm or leg to replace the missing limb, in the medical world it is commonly said that the phantom “animates” the prosthesis. If a phantom limb shrinks over time, as they tend to, and then the amputee starts wearing a prosthesis, the phantom expands again to fill the prosthesis, like a hand filling a glove. Phantoms help people control their prosthetic limbs.
The body can be extended through prostheses in other ways as well. Gregory Bateson in his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind gives the example of a blind person with a stick. When the blind people walk along using a stick, it becomes a kind of extension of their body, enabling them to feel what is in their environment; they experience it as if it were an extension of their body. In fact, this is a general principle. When we use tools or machines, they can become like a prosthesis; a sculptor with a chisel, a painter with a brush, a skier with skis, a driver with a car, or a pianist with a piano.
In summary, minds extend throughout our bodies and through prosthetic extensions of our bodies, and are not confined to our heads.
3. Vision
Minds extend beyond our brains through vision. When I look at a tree, my image of the tree seems to be outside me, where the tree is. But according to the materialist theory, everything I see is in my head. The image of the tree is not out there where it seems to be; it is a “representation” in my brain.
I suggest that vision involves the extension of our minds outwards, just as it seems to. Light comes into the eyes, inverted images form on both retinas, changes occur in the rod or cone cells, impulses travel up the optic nerves, and changes happen in the brain. All these processes have been studied scientifically in great detail. Materialists assume that the brain then produces a kind of virtual reality display inside the brain in three dimensions and full colour which we somehow experience inside our heads. Instead, I think these images are projected outwards to where they seem to be.
This is not an original theory, it’s what practically every culture in the world takes for granted and so do children in our own culture, until they are educated to believe it is all inside the brain. But despite this education, most people still take it for granted the images are outside them where they seem to be. This is our immediate experience. It takes persistent intellectual contortions to persuade yourself that everything you see is inside your head.
If I project out an image when I look at something, my mind in some sense touches what I am looking at and therefore might affect it. This is not a metaphysical speculation; it is a testable scientific theory. If I look at you from behind and if you do not know I am there, can you feel me looking? This is a common experience. About 95% of people, including children, have felt when they were being looked at from behind. Most people just turn round without thinking about it and find someone staring at them. Most people have also had the converse experience of staring at someone from behind who turned around and looked straight back. The scientific name for this sense of being stared at is scopaesthesia, scop as in microscope, to do with looking, and aesthesia to do with feeling, as in anaesthesia and synaesthesia. The existence of scopaesthesia is now supported by a large body of experimental research. Nevertheless, its existence is controversial; materialists regard it as impossible because of their belief that minds are confined to brains.
Scopaesthesia is widespread in the animal kingdom. Many wildlife photographers have found that even if they are in a hide (called a blind in North America) and invisible to an animal, when they look through a telephoto lens, mammals and birds can often detect when they are being watched. Photographers learn by experience to take the shot quickly because the animal will run or fly away. Many people have experienced scopaesthesia with wild and domesticated animals, in both directions: they respond to the stare of an animal, or an animal responds to their looks.
Scopaesthesia may have evolved in prey animals in response to predation. An animal that could feel when a hidden predator was looking at it would have a better chance of escaping than one that could not. Even today the sense of being stared at seems to work best when people are in situations of potential danger.
It is now possible to train yourself to become more sensitive to looks through an app, called eyesense.training This is research that anyone can do, and it raises a very profound question: how does vision work? What is it that our minds project out? Is the projection of the image in some sense closely coupled to light itself, is it as it were the reverse of a photon? Does light go one way and is there a flow of virtual images in the opposite direction?
One school of quantum physics proposes that there are indeed flows in both directions when light is emitted and absorbed. The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics due to John Cramer, further developed by Ruth Kastner, proposes that when light is absorbed, there is a reverse process going in the opposite direction in space and time. The light comes in from the past towards the future, while the outward projection is from the future towards the past, going backwards in time. This is called a “handshake” across space and time. The regular light goes out from the emitter to the absorber, while the absorber sends an influence going in the opposite direction to the emitter. Seers and seen are reciprocally linked together.
4. Social bonds and telepathy
Minds extend around us is through our social bonds. We are social animals, linked to other people in social groups. We are embedded in families, societies, associations, work colleagues, football teams, religious communities, educational institutions, and so on. There are all sorts of social groups to which we belong and through which we are linked.
I hope the essays and talks I share through Substack will help to stimulate fresh thinking and encourage a more holistic approach to science. However, this is by no means my full-time job. I am mainly engaged in scientific research across several fronts, some of which I have yet to discuss publicly, and I regularly publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals (see the Research section on sheldrake.org for details). I also summarise my research findings in an ongoing series of videos called Findings, which I publish here on Substack.
Traditional funding institutions are reluctant to pay for these kinds of exploration, so the generosity of people who support my work makes this research possible. But if you can’t contribute financially, don’t worry. I am happy to share ideas, and much of my content will remain free and open-access.
Rupert Sheldrake
