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Rupert Sheldrak with Hampstead Woodlands manager Varun Verma |
Food for telepathic thought
Scientist and author Rupert
Sheldrake believes reading each other’s mind is a real possibility. He shared his culinary thoughts with Sara Newman
WHEN the phone rings and you know who it is, a dream becomes reality or a friend says exactly the words you were thinking.
Worth exploration or just coincidence?
The British biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At, and the man who formulated the theory of morphic resonance and lives, thinks there is something to it.
So does the University of Cambridge, where he achieved a double first-class honours in biochemistry and has now been appointed to the Perrott-Warwick Scholarship for physical research and parapsychology.
“I have always been interested in Eastern philosophy,” says Rupert, sitting in the cool, airy interior of Woodlands, a south Indian vegetarian restaurant in Heath Street in Hampstead.
Rupert, who lives in Willow Road, in Hampstead, with his wife Jill Purce and their two sons, Merlin, 19 and Cosmo, 17, says he is not a militant vegetarian but he prefers to avoid eating meat.
He said: “It’s not cruel to eat animals necessarily. I’m just against factory farming.”
After visiting the flagship Woodlands restaurant in Madras back in 1974, when he began his nine-year stay in India studying sustainable crop management and living in an ashram for a period, he has been a long-standing loyal customer.
“I like the fact that you don’t have to scratch around the menu looking for something vegetarian,” he said.
“And, unlike most Indian restaurants, it’s authentic south Indian.”
We shared a portion of Idli to start, which amounted to a soft lentil pillow each with coconut chutney and sambar on the side.
The incredible dahi vada is a similar dish of lentil doughnuts but this time immersed in yoghurt, doused in green chilli and cumin, and sweetened with sugar and cinamon.
Already quite full, but by now on a roll, we tried a thali and a masala dosa (pancake filled with potatoes, onions and peas).
The thali included dal (lentils with ginger, lemon and green chilli), channa (chickpeas in light masala sauce) malai paneer (Indian cheese curry) and a mixed vegetable bhaiji as well as coconut rice and paratha.
When I came up for air, Rupert filled me in on his latest experiment.
In an attempt to make science more accessible, and to encourage more people to test their telepathic abilities, he has devised a series of experiments using text messages. The guinea pig in this instance is you and the catalyst your nearest and dearest.
Rupert expects to find that the guinea pig will be able to not just guess who has texted them but which of their chosen friends will text them above the rate one would expect according to chance.
To take part check out his website www.
sheldrake.org
So what of the naysayers?
“There are some people in the scientific world who think telepathy is an impossibility,” said Rupert.
“Their reasons for doubting it are based on dogmatism, not on evidence.”
But, he added: “There’s a lot of people in conventional science that are totally open to this.”
After a ball of syrupy gulab jamun or some crushed almond badam halwa, anyone would be ready to believe in transcendental experiences.
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