Most of us know it well – the almost physical sensation that we are the object of someone’s attention. Is the feeling all in our head? And what about related phenomena, such as telepathy and premonitions? Are they merely subjective beliefs? In The Sense of Being Stared At, renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake explores the intricacies of the mind and discovers that our perceptive abilities are stronger than many of us could have imagined.
Despite a traditional academic background, Sheldrake has devoted his notable career as a scientist and writer to challenging the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ science. A firm believer in the power of an experiment to yield answers about nature, he has dedicated years of intense research to investigating our common beliefs about what he calls our seventh sense. After compiling a database of 4,000 case histories, 2,000 questionnaires, 1,500 telephone interviews, and the results of a decade of scientifically controlled experiments, Sheldrake argues persuasively in this compelling, innovative book that such phenomena are real. In fact, he rejects the label of paranormal and shows how these psychic occurrences are a normal part of human nature.
As an explanation for this more intimate connection with the external world, Sheldrake suggests that our minds are not limited to our brains, but rather stretch outward to touch the beings and objects that we perceive. Once this extended influence of the mind is taken into consideration, many puzzling phenomena begin to make sense, including telepathy and phantom limbs.
Sheldrake shows that telepathy depends on social bonds. He traces its evolution from the connections between members of animal groups such as flocks, schools, and packs. In the modern world, telepathy occurs most commonly just before telephone calls.
Sheldrake summarizes startling new experimental evidence for the reality of telephone telepathy, and shows how readers can do tests for themselves. Combining the tradition of pragmatic experimentation with a refusal to allow science to fall into dogmatism, Sheldrake pioneers an intriguing new inquiry into the mysteries of our deepest nature. Rigorously researched, yet completely accessible, this groundbreaking book provides a refreshing new way of thinking about ourselves and our relationships with other people, with animals, and with the world around us.
Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world’s most innovative biologists and writers, is best known for his theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance, which leads to a vision of a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory.
He worked in developmental biology at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow of Clare College. He was then Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project. , funded from Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Rupert Sheldrake: The Sense of Being Stared At
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Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard University, and formerly worked at Bell Laboratories. His research on artificial intelligence and neuroscience has been published in leading scientific journals, and also featured in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Economist. His laboratory at MIT is currently inventing technologies for mapping connections between the brain’s neurons, and investigating the hypothesis that we are all unique because we are “wired differently.”
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Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and award-winning lecturer at Stanford University. A leading expert on the mind-body relationship, her work integrates the latest findings of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine with contemplative practices of mindfulness and compassion from the traditions of Buddhism and yoga. She is the author of The Willpower Instinct and Yoga for Pain Relief.







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Robert Scaer, M.D. received his B.A. in Psychology, and his M.D. degree at the University of Rochester. He is Board Certified in Neurology, and has been in practice for 36 years, twenty of those as Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services at the Mapleton Center in Boulder, CO. His primary areas of interest and expertise have been in the fields of traumatic brain injury and chronic pain, and more recently in the study of traumatic stress and its role in physical and emotional symptoms, and in diseases.