Sheldrake's Morphogenic Field - Innovation (Evolution)

by BBella , Monday, October 17, 2016, 23:02 (2957 days ago) @ dhw

I am confused with your comments before this one, so will start with this one:

Dhw: When you say matter and energy keep changing but the morphic fields stay the same, I’m not sure which fields you are referring to.

All the morphic fields stay the same in the sense they are the memory of what's gone before - so they provide guidelines for matter and energy to continue to be what they ARE creating. Even matter and energy may have their own morphic fields. I am assuming everything has a morphic field. Morphic field being the memory of all that IS.

Inanimate water in a bucket of dirt will become something different, which will then have its own morphic field. So in inanimate matter we have an unchanged generic morphic field (it's still water) within a new individual morphic field. But the generic information which made a pre-human

I'm, again, confused. What is generic information?

Dhw:...But the generic information which made a pre-human must have changed when the pre-human underwent the innovations which turned it into a human.If you believe in common descent - which I think you do - every single species (broad sense) must have gone through the same process. So the generic field has changed. Where, then, does one individual/generic morphic field begin/end in its connection with other individual/generic morphic fields? I find all this rather confusing - but the concept intrigues me. I'm just trying to get to grips with it.

So sorry to be completely lost here with your above comment and other comments I left out.

Dhw: And so there are different forces that bring into being all that IS in every moment.
BBELLA: Or, just as possible, one force that brings into being all that IS in every moment.

It depends what level we are talking on: We can argue that all matter is subject to natural laws, to cause and effect, to God’s will. We see individual forces constantly interacting, but there is no limit to the causal links between them and the interactions that preceded them, all the way back to the beginning of the universe, if it had one. So you can say that whatever drives the universe brings into being all that IS in every moment. Or you can say that each individual force interacts with other individual forces to bring everything into being. Top down, or bottom up?

Again, I am lost. Can you give an example of the level you are talking about that has different forces? I am only thinking of one force that holds all things together, processing all matter and energy to create what IS, including the memory of the morphic field/s.

BBELLA: I don't know where consciousness begins and ends either, but I do believe it's possible that consciousness too has its own morphic field.

Dhw: If consciousness has a morphic field which is independent of all matter (including organisms),...

I dont know if consciousness is independent of all matter, in the same way I dont know how far each independent interconnections reach between the morphic fields. Through morphic resonance, it seems there is a vibratory relationship between fields, so consciousness itself may resonate with other fields in the same way.

Dhw:...it could only be the sort of immaterial power people call God.

I cannot (at this time) agree with that statement. If consciousness has it's own morphic field and is itself a part of, connected to, resonates with the other many morphic fields, does not mean to me that it is God. It is one part of a whole.

I am feeling my way through this (as I know you are as well) - so hope you will be patient with me. I did recently purchase one of Sheldrake's books (for the first time), so I will see if he can shed light on any of my/our muddling through this (as I have a chance to read). But as I have said many times before, when I was ill, I went through some mind expanding dreams and insights that are very difficult for me to put in words. But Sheldrake, Talbot (Holographic Universe) (Bohm and Krishnamurti as well to some extent) seemed to express as near as I've read to what I experienced "seeing". I've not tried to express it except initially in a few poems and then here in the forum, now and then. So I am wading through, fleshing out what I experienced, along with similarities to Sheldrake (at this point) which seems to be the closest to my experience. As I said before, I dont know if Sheldrake and I agree on everything (no one does), but his work can be a jumping off point for our discussion.