A4 - Sunday, March 4, 1984 - North Shore News

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CITY WORKER Fred Donnelly i<a't really all steamed up, he’s just applying the steam to the North Vancosver city courtyard as part of clean-up efforts.

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

AVE YOU EVER NOTICED how jokes surface, then vanish? If you travel much, the amazing thing is how a joke just told in

Vancouver is circulating in London, England. It becomes stale in both places at almost tHe same time, as if everyone had heard it already.

It may be that this instan- taneous transmission of humor around the world isn’t just an umpression. It may be the result of what biologist Robert Sheldrake calls ‘‘mor- phogenetic fie

Sheldrake’s idea has had the scientific community in an uproar since the publica- tion of his book A New Science of Life, in 1981. His hypothesis is that in addition to the fields already known to science-gravitational ficlds, electromagnetic fields, etc. — there are morphogenetic fields in nature which trans- mit information § indepen- dently from time and space.

Example:

It has been known since the 1920s that rats somchow learn from cach other even though they may be scpara- ted by several oceans and conunents

After 22) gencrations of rats were run through a water maze at Harvard, 1 was dis. covered that the newest spent mens could figure out the soluuion ten umes as quickly as then ancestors

That may not be too amaz ing oun itself. but when the expernment was repeated in Scouland and Austraha, the FIRST) generation of rats mastered the water mase as fast as the fastest, learners at Harvard

The information had somchow been transmitted to

newest

ALL rats since wt couldn't have been transmitted = by genes, there had to be

another explanation

Dr Sheldrake so caplana Gon os that the morphopcene te freid Carned that mforma thon around the world

There is a sumalar mystery in othe growth of crystals ,teated ott bevomes casicr

Ome a crystal os unmediatcly and quicker clrew here

tor huspobes ate st

Sheldrake io t suggesting

ha ras can ounthucace

crystals or vice versa. But “‘like influences like,’” he Says - repeating an age-old philosophy.

A couple of really interest- ing preliminary tests on peo- ple have so far backed up his idea. An English magazine urged its readers to memorize three rhymes. One was a popular Japanese nursery rhyme, another an obscure Japanese poem, and the third pure gibberish.

If Sheldrake’s theory was correct, the first one should have been much easier for English readers to memorize since millions of Japanese children had been learning 1 for generations. The tra- ditional rhyme was, in fact, the one most quickly grasped by everybody

Then there was the ‘“‘hid- den faces’’ test Two pictures that looked ke abstract art were shown to people in various countries to find how many could find the hidden faces in the pictures in one minutc.

One of the pictures was then shown on Enghsh TV Several million vicwers were told how to find the hidden faces After that, both pic tures were shown to pcople outside England, who hadn't seen the TV show

The total number of people able to find the hidden faces in the practure not shown on TV increased by only nine per

cent a figure not con sidercd statistically signa fant) But the total aumber of peopic figuang out) the

answer to the picture shown oon TS even though they

Give to the Kadney Foundation of Canada

had never seen the show — mcreased by 76 per cent!

At the very least, this seems to suggest some sort of mass telepathy at work. Dr. Sheldrake argues that the probability is less than one in 100 that this result was ob- tained by chance.

Some of his critics accuse him of trying to sneak reli- gion in through the back door of science after it had been kicked out the front. If his morphogenetic fields ac- tually exist, the power of prayer, for instance, would be quict real.

It also leads credence to the Christian doctrine that we should be charitable in our thoughts as well as our deeds — since our mental activity may indeed affect the world around us.

Personally, | am quict sure it does. So watch what you think. The whole world might be listening.

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No emergency behind flares

NORTH VANCOUVER residents who see strange lights in the Wednesday afternoon skies for the next several months don’t have to panic.

The Pacific Marine Train- ing Institute will be discharg- ing distress flares between ! and 3 p.m. almost every Wednesday and on the occa- sional Thursday between now and the end of June.

Flares will be set off as part of the school’s marine educa-

ERNIE CRIST interviews

Mayor Baker

Channel 10

tion program on March 14, 21 and 28; April 11 and 26; May 9, 16 and 24; and June 6, 13 and 20.

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