Among his early influences, Rupert Sheldrake cites The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn. He has said this book led him to view contemporary scientific understanding of life as simply a paradigm, which he called "the mechanistic theory of life."
Reading Kuhn's work, Sheldrake says, focused his mind on how scientific paradigms can change [16]. Sheldrake says that although there are similarities between morphic resonance and Hinduism's akashic records[31], he first conceived of the idea while at Cambridge U, before his travels to India, where he later developed it.
He attributes the origin of his idea to two influences, his studies of the holistic tradition in biology, and French philosopher Henri Bergson's 1896 book Matter and Memory. He says he took Bergson's concept of memories not being materially embedded in the brain and generalized it to morphic resonance, where memories are not only immaterial but also under the influence of the collective memories of similar organisms.
While his colleagues at Cambridge were not receptive to the idea, Sheldrake found the opposite to be true in India.
He recounts his Indian colleagues saying, "There's nothing new in this; it was all known millennia ago to the ancient rishis [seers]." Sheldrake thus characterizes morphic resonance as a convergence between Western and Eastern thought yet found by himself first in Western philosophy [15, 151].
Sheldrake has also noted similarities between morphic resonance and Carl Jung's collective unconscious, with regard to collective memories being shared across individuals and the coalescing of particular behaviors through repetition, which Jung called archetypes [15].
But whereas Jung assumed that archetypal forms were transmitted through physical inheritance, Sheldrake attributes collective memories to morphic resonance and rejects any explanation of them involving what he terms "mechanistic biology."
Lewis Wolpert, one of Sheldrake's critics, has described morphic resonance as an updated Drieschian vitalism [28, 152]. More
What does Buddhism have to say about "time"? One thing's sure, there is anionic time called the Eternal Now. There is only now, and there only ever has been now.
But that is hard to understand until one experiences it then it suddenly seems obvious. Ask Eckhart Tolle. He experienced it and wrote The Power of Now with just one message for the world, talk after talk.
Ram Dass on LSD saw love
Ram Dass (Harvard Jew turned Hindu Dr. Richard Alpert) wrote the classic Be Here Now, having also realized this truth about time. There are wonderful stories in ancient Indian texts about time that say that time is NOT simultaneous. It is relative. It differs from plane to plane in Buddhism's 31 Planes of Existence.
Ancient India understood that time in terms of kalpas (aeons) explained by akasha devas (space entities). It moves differently in heavenly worlds, lasting so much longer than our time -- but possibly happening at the same time. Time will feel very long, even eternal, in other worlds, on other planes. But though that much time may move that slowly there, it will not simultaneously move that way on earth.
Whoa, perhaps too much thinking doesn't pay and I should just be attentive to now and accept.
.
The ancient Vedas speak of time travel?
One Vedic Sanskrit tale speaks of a king and his daughter who were visited by ETs and invited to visit their world/planet. They boarded a vimana (UFO), flew there very quickly, enjoyed a day there, then asked to return home. They were told they could be returned home, but a great deal of time would have passed on earth while they were visiting. When they returned, everyone they ever knew would be long dead and forgotten.
But this is all I have to say about time. I learned it in college as an anecdote in the social sciences. I laughed at how backward some human societies can be until I suddenly realized they were right. We were wrong and we had always been wrong. You know how we say time is an arrow moving from left to right?
We can, and often do, picture time like a boat moving west on a river. The boat relentlessly move from the past (on the left) through the present (in the middle) into the future (on the right). That may all be true. What this society saw is the opposite of what we see, and that is:
Which way am I facing in the arrow of time?
Where are we standing on this boat moving through time?
WEST'S ANSWER: Of course, we're toward the front of the boat, in the driver's seat, looking forward into the future, the present all around us, and the past vanishing into the distance behind us.
THEIR ANSWER: Of course, we are in the back of the boat only ever looking backward into the past. We can never see the future (other than with premonitions, omens, or exhibitions of psychic power) because the boat hasn't gotten there yet (and of course never really does because everything always stays in the present, which is all there is).
What time is it? - Look carefully.
But, we might argue, what about the past? I'm always living in the past, except for the time I "spend" (metaphorically like a limited amount of money) living in the future.
I spend next to no time here, now, just being.
I ruminate and am sad about the past, or I worry and am nervous about the future. I more or less ignore the present -- except when meditating, practicing mindfulness (sati), or listening to the Dhamma, the Buddha's Teachings.
Time travel will confuse us more
The truth is, if we think about it, even when we are "living" in the past or future, we only ever actually do that NOW. We don't go back to the past, and we don't actually "go" to the future. Those are just designations, so that the only time we ever are when we look is in the present. We are not present for the present, but that's where we actually are. Virtually, we're wasting away in the imaginary past or imaginary future, being imagined right NOW. But where are we on that imaginary boat in the example?
That's right, they're right. We've been wrong and haven't been seeing it correctly. We are not in the front part looking forward, and we certainly aren't in the driver's seat (controlling all that's coming at us). We are being carried along, not knowing where we're going, and only finding out after the fact.
I'm bored being here now. Let's talk future.
It could well be that this "now" business is not just a designation. Like a book or album, all time may already be. The story might already be set but we just haven't read it or heard it yet. So we imagine we have perfect freewill and will find out as things transpire.
Time exists, but how it exists -- not as a natural and integral part of the universe, but an artificial and imposed screening device -- is the real question. In a book, there is no time. It is all there all at once. In reading it or flipping through the pages, we create a kind of time or sequencing, ordering, stacking. We can read slowly or jump around very quickly, but wherever we go (in the book), there we are. When? Now. Only ever now.
This is the first paradox of time: Our attitudes toward time have a profound impact on our lives and world, yet we seldom recognize it. The authors' goal is to help reclaim yesterday, enjoy today, and master tomorrow with new ways of seeing and working with our past, present, and future. Just as Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences permanently altered our understanding of intelligence and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink gave us an appreciation for the adaptive unconscious, Prof. of Social Psychology Philip Zimbardo (infamous for his Stanford Prison Experiment) and Dr. John Boyd’s book changes the way we think about and experience time.
Astropyre (video); text by Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
This 'l save our kids from capitalist exploitation
The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was a bipartisan U.S. government committee formed in 1985 [1] with the stated goal of "increasing parental control over children's access to music deemed to have violent, drug-related, or sexual themes."
The committee's work led to the widespread adoption of the Parental Advisory sticker. The PMRC was known for its prejudicial targeting of heavy metal music, which drew opposition and criticism [2].
On political and religious grounds, the committee was supported by American Protestant televangelists, Reaganites, and the larger Christian evangelical movement, who accused hard rock and heavy metal music of harboring Satanic and occult related themes.
The committee was founded by four women known as the "Washington Wives"—a reference to their husbands' connections with the government power elite in the Washington, D.C. area.
Those female founders of the PMRC are Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore... More
(Firstpost) Japan: Viral abandoned baby monkey with plush toy finds new family | Firstpost America | N18G
Mom, are we human? - No, Son, they won't let us in their club yet. - Why?
Panchi-kun (born July 26, 2025), known simply as "Punch [the Monkey]," is a baby Japanese macaque at Japan's animal internment camp, aka Ichikawa City Zoo [1, 2]. Punchy gained viral attention on social media for his attachment to a large orangutan stuffed plush toy doll [3]. According to zoo prison officials, Panchi-kun's internet popularity led to a surge in visitors to the zoo starting in February 2026 [4]. More
At the dawn of human (pre-)history, what did our ancestors do to stay warm in the Ice Age?
In the 1960s, sex researchers Masters and Johnson declared the end of the fake orgasm. Nearly two decades later, in 1982, evangelical activist Tim LaHaye foretold that the entire pornography industry would soon be driven out of business.
Neither prediction proved true. Instead, with the rise of the internet, pornography saturates the American conscience more than ever and has reshaped our understanding of sexuality, relationships, media, and even the nature of addiction.
American sociologist Dr. Kelsy Burke has spent the last five years researching and interviewing internet pornography's opponents and its sympathizers.
In The Pornography Wars, Prof. Burke does a deep dive into the long history of pornography in America and then turns her gaze on our present society to examine the ways this industry touches on the most intimate parts of American lives.
She offers a complete understanding of the major players in the debates around porn's place in society: everyone from sex workers, activists, therapists, religious leaders, and consumers.
In doing so, she addresses and debunks the myths that surround porn and porn usage while showing how everything from the way we teach children about sex to the legal protections for what can be published is tied up in the deeply complicated battles over pornography.
Sweeping, savvy, and deeply researched, The Pornography Wars is a necessary and comprehensive new look at pornography and American life. More
Something worse than porn?
Mitch Jeserich, Prof. Kelsy Burke (KPFA.org, June 23, 2023/KPFK.org, July 21, 2025); Psychosos, YouTube; CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
Did your date give you 'the ick'? Here's the science behind the feeling
"Ugh, eww, and ick! I'm out! H to the NO!"
The food was top-notch, the atmosphere was cozy, and my date aimed to entertain. I love a good personal story, so I invited him to relate one that he'd referenced in his profile. Good fodder for a first date, I thought.
At one point in the story, as he recounted it, a goat butted its head into an outdoor toilet that he happened to be using, shoving the door open.
You could say I got "the ick" — that feeling of disgust when someone you're dating does this one thing that you just can't get past. The term was used on Ally McBeal in the 1990s and then popularized more recently on the reality show Love Island and on Nobody Wants This.
What gives me the ick and what gives you the ick can be worlds apart. From wearing acrylic nails to laughing too loud to using a Borat voice in the middle of a make-out session, a little internet searching will reveal a whole universe of "icks."
There's an idea in psychology that all emotions, from fear to disgust, were evolutionarily advantageous traits. But is the ick really serving us now?
One theory posits that disgust evolved to protect humans from pathogens that make us sick. And that kind of makes intuitive sense: If a piece of fruit or meat smells disgusting, you probably won't want to eat it.
But Professor of Psychology Josh Rottman, who studies disgust at Franklin & Marshall College, says disgust isn't just a biological function; it's a product of our socialization. And that means if you get the ick on a date, it might be time for some self-examination.
Prof. Rottman spoke with It's Been a Minute host Brittany Luse about the psychology of disgust and the case for pushing past the ick when it comes to choosing a partner. Here are four takeaways from their conversation:
1. Little kids don't feel disgust — and that tells us something
Maybe innocence means not having disgust yet.
"Unlike many emotions that emerge within the first year of life or so, it seems like disgust doesn't really robustly come online until around 5, 6 years of age," Prof. Rottman says. (Think about the toddler who has no qualms about eating a stale Cheerio off the floor.)
If disgust were all about keeping us healthy, he says, researchers would see it in younger children. Instead, kids start experiencing disgust around the same time they start thinking about "cooties" — and who's in the "in" group and "out" group on the playground.
2. Disgust is more gut reaction than conscious thought process
If you're at the movies and you see your date pick her nose before reaching for your hand, you don't think, "This behavior is indicative of poor hygiene and lack of consideration." You just flinch and pull your hand away. This revulsion response happens almost instantly; it comes without any thought, says Prof. Rottman. And he says once you feel disgusted by something, it can be really difficult to overcome that feeling.
As host Luse of It's Been a Minute puts it, it's just "this tiny bit of disgust that you just can't look past or get over."
3. Disgust is related to social norms — often ugly ones
"I think a lot of the specific icks that people have are reflections of social norms that we might want to challenge," says Prof. Rottman.
For instance, actress Millie Bobby Brown has said her "biggest ick" is when a man holds an umbrella, because "there's something about it that just feels really pathetic."
Prof. Rottman says Brown's ick might be an "aversion to the norm violation against masculinity."
And research shows that the consequences of disgust can get a lot worse than getting rejected on a date.
Prof. Rottman says that disgust may have served an evolutionary purpose in that it could help your reputation to distance yourself from people who your group considered undesirable. "I think disgust has evolved as a way to really embody a lot of xenophobia and bigotry," he says.
"There's a lot of good evidence that genocides and a lot of horrific things that have happened in society have been correlated in some way with disgust," Prof. Rottman says.
Tables turn on racist/implicitly biased Karen
Nazi princesses promoted by racist Disney
For example, Nazi propaganda used terms like "parasites" and "lice" to describe Jewish people. Disgust has been leveraged throughout history to create the feeling that certain people are "impure" or less than human.
"The ick is probably a much more minor version of that," Rottman says.
4. It's worth trying to get past the ick
Why can't I find my one and only perfect prince?
Prof. Rottman says that while it's difficult to completely shake a feeling of disgust about another person's particular behavior, getting the ick doesn't have to be a deal breaker.
And, he adds, there's good reason not to give it too much weight in dating: "I think…these feelings of ickiness are not going to be great signals of whether someone's going to be good for us and a good partner."
He shared that he even gets the ick from his partner from time to time — when she walks around barefoot in the garden, developing big calluses on her feet. "I think I can realize that…she's great in so many other ways, that that shouldn't be something to drive me away," Prof. Rottman says. (The professor said he got his wife's permission before sharing this story.)
As host Luse suggested to Prof. Rottman, perhaps "love is persevering against the ick."
So next time you get the ick, consider whether that says more about you than the other person.
And Luse says on It's Been a Minute, maybe "it's a you problem."
Corey Antonio Rose, B.A. Parker, Barton Girdwood, Liam McBain, and Jasmine Romero contributed to this story. Lead photo: munandme/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Hooray for Buddhist Japan and Los Angeles, as Asian fans are more excited about this Dodgers' win than the diehards who just lost Mexican legend Fernando Valenzuela on the eve of his birthday.
Shohei "Show Me The Money" Ohtani injured himself (shoulder subluxation, meaning he pulled it and it popped back), trying to steal a base to pull off this great win against the Less Coast (East), proving that the West Coast is the Best Coast, if rappers are to be believed.
It's mayhem on the streets of the City of Lost Angels as riots begin to form in some parts of the megalopolis. Police prepared in advance to over-police the heck out of sports fans who get too rowdy, as Israel rejoices that there is yet another distraction from their ongoing and expanding genocide.
Israeli is ethnically cleansing the Palestinians off land it stole with the secret dream being revealed of a future "Greater Israel," a Jewish empire (in alliance with Western powers, weapons, geopolitical influence, resource extraction, and full spectrum dominance like the colonial British rulers dreamed of exercising) that expands into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and Iran, with Egypt ceding even more land for Israel' settler colonial project of Ashkenazi (European) Jews in the Middle East.
PM/Dictator Bibi Netanyahu's reign of terror can continue undisturbed until the U.S. election is settled, which will not be for weeks or months, until the transfer of power and installation of Pres. Vance, the ultimate winner in all this.
The original Planet of the Apes tried to warn us: If "religion is the opiate of the masses," sport is the stimulant, the caffeine fiending to meth devouring mover and shaker of the sheeple. Therefore, let us all chant our unofficial national mantra:
"Go our side! Down with the other side! Hooray! USA, USA, USA!!!" (lol)
All hail New York, for the last shall be the first in the unfolding of deeds and their repercussions as they cycle on endlessly in this continued-wandering-on called samsara.
The Yanks need to win at home or LA will be lifting the Commissioner’s Trophy! Can the Bronx Bombers force the series back to Los Angeles? Two of the biggest teams facing off in the ULTIMATE showdown!
THANKS to ALL, if reading this, the credit goes to YOU! All of you made this channel successful! Make sure you fire up the chat and keep the trash talking CIVIL! Time to have some fun! Glad to have you here to hang out, chat it up and listen to the game with thousands of fellow baseball fans! Give: https://tilt.fyi/jqeJTq1JTI. Huge thanks to this amazing community! It started as a dream to have the best online fan club for Toronto Sports, and every single day the dreams are becoming reality! Thanks for hanging out, cheering on sports teams, keeping it classy and making a REAL-WORLD difference! On to go get that plaque! See you in the chat! #losangelesdodgers #newyorkyankees #worldseries #losangelesdodgers vs #newyorkyankees
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