Category Archives: Practice

Books! Rupert Sheldrake’s Ways to Go Beyond

Books, Practice

A few weeks ago Rupert Sheldrake’s new book Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work saw the light. As soon as I saw the beautiful sunflower on the cover, I knew I had to order a hardcover edition of this sequel to Science and Spiritual Practices.

Is it pure coincidence that a book written in the same spirit as the Gamma Tao has a sunflower on its cover? Or is this symbolic telepathy? In the universe of Rupert Sheldrake this may even be a possibility.

Whatever it is, I do feel a special connection with Rupert Sheldrake. I have heard him speak on several occasions now. Last year I even briefly hold hands with him during a short group ritual before having cakes, tea and conversation together at the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in Haye-on-Wye.

Such a spontaneous tea ritual is typical for the way Sheldrake approaches spiritual practices in his latest two books. According to Sheldrake spiritual practices have many positive effects that can be experienced by participants and validated by scientific research.

In Science and Spiritual Practices Sheldrake wrote:

“the old-fashioned opposition between science and religion is a false dichotomy. Open-minded scientific studies enhance our understanding of spiritual and religious practices.”

Our little tea ritual at the festival certainly brought about feelings of gratitude and instantly increased the bond between the participants.

A controversial scientist

In scientific circles Rupert Sheldrake is a controversial man. His theory of morphic resonance has often been dismissed as pseudoscience. His experiments on dogs that know when their owners are coming home, the sense of being stared at and telephone telepathy are seldom taken serious by other scientists. A few years back TED in a rare act of censorship banned his talk from its website.

In this talk and his book The Science Delusion Sheldrake argued that many things that are taken for granted in science can still be questioned. He challenged the scientific world to break out of its mechanical and materialistic paradigm. Science has brought us great technological progress, but in his eyes it has become a dogmatic “belief system” based on philosophical materialism.

There may be a great amount of speculation in the idea of morphogenetic fields or the possibility that the sun has a degree of consciousness, but when he poses “heretical” hypotheses like these, Sheldrake does so with carefully phrased arguments and always remains within the boundaries of free scientific enquiry.

It is impossible to say whether Sheldrake’s hypotheses are true or false, but his arguments often make sense. Consciousness remains a “hard problem” for modern science and the idea of panpsychism seems to gain some new grounds. I find debates on the relation between science and religion or the nature of consciousness always fascinating and listen to talks of opponents like Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett as well. I never feel angry or upset when my own world view is challenged. More than that, debates like these can lead me to an open-minded state of aporia.

Wisdom of spiritual practices

The Gamma Tao is agnostic about these things. As I wrote several times before, the Gamma Tao is not about the ultimate truth of reality, salvation or enlightenment. It is a basis for practical wisdom that works.

And that is exactly the reason why Ways to Go Beyond and Science and Spiritual Practices align so well with the spirit of the Gamma Tao. These two books show again and again how spiritual practices from all kinds of religious traditions can help us to increase our wisdom as human beings.

Sheldrake does not only show how they work, but as the subtitle of Ways to Go Beyond already suggests, he also sets out to explain Why They Work.

In Science and Spiritual Practices Sheldrake wrote chapters about: meditation; the flow of gratitude, reconnecting with the more-than-human world; relating to plants; rituals and their relation to the past; singing, chanting, and the power of music; and pilgrimage and holy places.

In Ways to go beyond he continues with: the spiritual side of sports; learning from animals; fasting; psychedelics; powers of prayer; holy days and festivals; and cultivating good habits and being kind.

All chapters end with a few suggestions on how to integrate these practices into our own lives.

Both books show that Rupert Sheldrake has a broad knowledge of both religious traditions and recent scientific developments. At the same time these two books are very personal. Sheldrake draws a lot on his own personal experiences. Some passages read like an autobiography.

The key word is connection. As Sheldrake writes in the last chapter of Science and Spiritual Practices:

“Connection is the theme that unifies them [the spiritual practices] all. They lead us beyond the mundane to deeper kinds of connection.”

The word religion itself also carries this idea of reconnecting (“re-ligare”). In this sense, you may say that all spiritual practices are essentially religious.

The chapters in Science and Spiritual Practices and Ways to Go Beyond show how each practice helps to establish new kinds of connection. This power to connect is the main reason why spiritual practices work and why they can help us to flourish like a sunflower.

Stepping Stones

Ethics, Practice

The Gamma Tao is easy to understand, but more difficult to practice.

To be honest, I like to sit in my room to read and meditate about how to live a good life. I can spend hours reading books about philosophy or religion, absorbing ideas of famous thinkers and explore fundamental questions of life in my head. In a way I am attracted to a contemplative life (vita contemplativa), but I know this can easily become an intellectual comfort zone.

All philosophies of life should be tested in real life situations, outside the safe environment of a cosy living room. The Gamma Tao should not only be great in theory, but more than that it has to be useful and practical in real life during interactions with other people and the natural world.

Vita contemplativa and vita activa should complement and enrich each other in a continuous feedback loop. The theoretical form of the Gamma Symbol can be used for contemplation, the practical form of the Gamma Tao indicates the way to an active life.

Below are seven basic and practical stepping stones that may help us in the balancing act of life. They are based on the practical symbol, but of course they are not exclusive to the Gamma Tao. Stepping stones like this can be found in many streams of thought:

  • Set a good intention
    An important first step is to set the intention to always do the right thing. A morning ritual might help to set this intention. Beware that we never know what will happen next. Good intentions can easily be disturbed. We may need to reset ourselves to this good default intention various times during the day. In this way we become people of good will and practice benevolence.
  • Open your mind
    It is impossible to know everything. No matter how smart or wise we think we are, we are actually ignorant about most things in life. We do not even fully know ourselves. Our own perspective is limited by nature. Therefore we are constant in need of input from others to correct and complement our views. Open-mindedness does not mean that we listen to the same group of people all the time. Especially nowadays it is easy to enter a bubble where you only find confirmation of your own views. Prepare yourself to find other points of view, especially ones that challenge your own ideas. This is real open-mindedness.
  • Accept what crosses your path
    The world continuously confronts us with new situations. These situations may be good for us or not so good. They may be the result of our own doing or just fate. Whatever the cause, we have to deal with them. It is often a good idea to start counting our blessings. These blessings came to us before the present situation arose. They include our inner potentials and (hidden) talents. Inner treasures like these are our Golden Gift. If we learn to cultivate gratitude for them, we increase our inner strength and happiness. This practice can prepare us to face the situation at hand in a better way.
  • Listen to your heart  
    We become aware of the world through the interplay of our senses and emotions. We are sentient beings with human emotions. Through our own emotions we learn what it means to be a human being. Our inner talent for empathy helps us to develop human values. The Golden Rule is a treasure based on empathy that teaches us to refrain from doing to others what we do not want others to do to us. If we manage to internalise this, we will develop our sense of compassion. We should try to face all situations with compassion or kindness.
  • Use your head
    Passions always have intensity. If we are passionate, they are strong. If we are indifferent, they are weak. The intensity of our emotions also fluctuates in time. If the intensity of an emotion is too strong, first take a deep breath.
    This is the moment to use our head, take some distance from our emotions and create space for rational thinking. If we take various points of view and also include the standpoints of others, we are able to put things in perspective. Since only exceptional situations call for extreme measures, the Golden Mean is a useful treasure to keep in mind when we try to find the just proportion for our reactions. Since we are not alone in this world, we cannot always have it our way. In most cases we must apply diplomatic skills of compromise. This does not mean that we must always end up somewhere in the middle. A middle position can lead to a stagnant status quo. If we take the Golden Ratio as an example, we may find natural proportions of progress.
  • React in a humane way
    Life is a continuous practice of receiving and giving. First we must accept what comes to us and then we have to give a reaction. As human beings we can use our  talents, emotions and ratio to give a creative and unique response to the situations we face. Our good intentions should guide us in an uplifting and humane direction.
    We are not things or numbers, but human beings with emotional, rational and probably even spiritual intelligence. That is why robots with artificial intelligence may help us out in practical ways, but they will never be able to replace us and create a humane society.
  • Go beyond
    We have to learn from our experiences. Examine your life. Life is a learning process. Otherwise we will make the same mistakes again and again. If we continue to practice, we may develop the skills to do the right thing in a natural, spontaneous way and reach a level of mastership in the art of living.
    Such a mastership will eventually go beyond the Gamma Tao. It will become a process to transform and transcend ourselves (and our ego). The Gamma Tao shows the initial steps of this path and as a compass for wisdom and compassion it only indicates the basic directions. All philosophical and spiritual traditions, their practices of reasoning, meditation and prayer, together with the latest scientific insights, can teach us all that we know about the living art of being in the universe.
This exploration of life is like a great adventure.
Even when we achieve a certain level of life mastership (reaching maturity is often a first step), we will never become supermen. We cannot do everything by ourselves. We will always need others.
During our steps on the stepping stones of life it is always good to remember the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Life is always a balancing act.
It is OK that once in a while we lose our balance, fall and get really wet. In these cases we have no other choice than to stand up and try again.
Only by trying again and again we may learn and eventually master.