The experiments of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, whose concept of “extended mind” is one of the more interesting developments in biological research this century, seem to have touched off a number of other scientists to follow suit.

The scientific journal Science is reporting the findings of neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson who has succeeded in simulating out of body experiences under laboratory conditions.

The findings seem to reveal that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to locate itself inside the human body. When the connection is disrupted, whether by illness, drugs or experiment, strange things begin to happen. The sensation arises that the mind has left the body.

Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and rods to confuse the brain and create the effect. A sitting volunteer wore goggles linked to a video camera pointing to his back. Looking through the goggles, he saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him. Touching his chest with a rod, which was unsighted to the camera, the split effect took hold.

Dr Ehrsson tried the experiment out on himself, “You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you’re looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it’s yourself, but it doesn’t feel like yourself. This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are.”

Mystics have been reporting out of body states since time began. They are usually dismissed by science as hallucinations or neurological disturbances. The state really has to be experienced to be understood, however.

Until now science has failed to reproduce it experimentally. This study appears to have simulated the effect in the laboratory, while also validating Sheldrake’s hypothesis of extended mind.

A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Thanks to the work of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, we are now more aware of the sensory situation of man than we were. In a recent book, The Sense of Being Stared At, Sheldrake suggests that we are surrounded by what he calls morphic fields. These personal fields stretch out from our bodies as a kind of extended mind-stuff and are responsible for all the unexplained phenomena we pigeon-hole under the term ”psi” — ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and others. As Sheldrake asserts, there is a mass of scientific corroboration for these “powers” of the human and animal minds, and his own experiments dramatically confirm them.

Within the notion of morphic fields, Sheldrake also includes morphogenetic fields, which act as the blueprint and creative principle behind the formation of all creatures, like ghostly Platonic forms.

In Rupert Sheldrake’s own words: “Morphic fields also underlie our perceptions, thoughts and other mental processes. The morphic fields of mental activities are called mental fields. Through [these], the extended mind reaches out into the environment through attention and intention, and connects with other members of social groups. These fields help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at, clairvoyance and psychokinesis. They may also help in the understanding of premonitions and precognitions through intentions projecting into the future.”

Sheldrake’s ideas on morphogenetic fields explain many grey areas in conventional understanding, especially in the science of genes and DNA. For example: “My suggestion is that morphic fields help impose order and pattern in this sensitive chaos [in the brain], and interact with the brain through their ordering activity. They contain an inherent memory, through morphic resonance. They also project out far beyond the brain through attention and intention.”

These hypotheses are so compelling that it surely cannot be long before the rest of science catches up, despite the earthquake that would follow in the scientific establishment.

But Zen Master Bankei was aware of all this more than three hundred years ago but under a different name : the Unborn Buddha-mind.

Bankei Yotaku, birth name Muchi, came from a family which had been doctors with the rank of samurai for many generations. As a child he was extremely independent and wilful, but with a sensitive intelligence that partly mitigated his faults. He was also extremely brave. At an annual stone-throwing contest, it was always Bankei who refused to give ground and took his side to victory.

His schooling was something of a problem, despite his natural aptitude. Calligraphy was not a favourite subject, especially the endless copying of the hundreds of Chinese characters, which is a fundamental part of a Japanese education, even today. He was often observed cutting classes early in order to avoid this tedious task. Another wearisome lesson involved reciting passages from the four great Confucian classics until the student knew them by heart.

It was during one of the Confucian classes, while reading a text from The Great Learning, that Bankei had a powerful insight. As the teacher spoke the words, “The way of great learning is to clarify bright virtue,” Bankei’s attention was riveted. On asking what “bright virtue” was, he received only stock answers which did not satisfy his curiosity. It was as if he was being prompted by old memories or very deep insights. His overriding desire was that this bright virtue should apply to him personally and not just be expressed in empty words, no matter how high-sounding. He wanted enlightenment, not definitions, and the search would occupy him totally for the next fourteen years.

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In a new study to examine what he calls “extended mind”, Dr Rupert Sheldrake states that people often know who is calling when the telephone rings :

“By far the most common apparent kind of telepathy in the modern world occurs in connection with telephone calls — when you think of someone for no apparent reason and then they ring and you say, ‘That’s funny I was just thinking about you.’ Is it a mass delusion or is something really happening?”

Extended mind is a phrase used often by Sheldrake, the Cambridge biologist, to explain all kinds of paranormal phenomena. He believes that this mind stretches out beyond us and accounts for the way some of us know when another person is looking at us.

Try watching people on the street as they walk past from a high window. The number who suddenly look up directly at you shows that they “know” they are being “pinged” by you. The only way it could happen is if there is a continuity of “mindstuff” between the two people.

Sheldrake conducts many experiments in this field, with remarkable results. His book, The Sense of Being Stared At, is a classic of the genre. As an accredited scientist, his experiments are always well designed and hard to fault.

His controversial research paper was presented at the British Association’s Festival of Science in Norwich, England.