"Some questions don't let go. I first encountered one of them around 2014 – at a TimeWaver conference, when Rupert Sheldrake spoke about his experiments."
A question that changes everything
Rupert Sheldrake stood before the audience – not as a preacher, not as a provocateur. Simply as someone who had looked carefully and could not look away.
The question he posed was disarmingly simple: What if nature is not a mechanical system of fixed laws – but an evolving organism with its own memory?
I still remember the feeling in that moment. Not conviction. But opening. The sense that something might exist beyond what we had previously considered possible. This article is my invitation to explore that question together.
Who is Rupert Sheldrake?
Rupert Sheldrake is not an esoteric outsider. He is a biologist who studied at Cambridge and Harvard, and spent decades in academic research. His work is controversial – and honestly, that is a sign that he is touching something important. Truly new ideas are rarely comfortable.
His central contribution: the theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance. Terms that sound unwieldy – but carry a surprisingly simple core idea.
Learn more about his work: sheldrake.org
Nature has a memory
The materialist worldview assumes: the universe is a machine. Laws are fixed. Living beings are complex robots. The brain produces consciousness like a computer produces software. Sheldrake asks: What if that's not right?
His thesis: The universe is not a mechanical system of fixed laws – but an evolving organism. Natural laws are not rules fixed since the Big Bang. They are evolutionary habits, solidifying through constant repetition across space and time.
What is a morphic field?
A morphic field is a non-material structure that determines the form, behavior, and spatial-temporal organization of a system. Not through energy or physical force – but through information.
The Rat Paradox – an experiment worth sitting with
One of Sheldrake's most fascinating experiments – and one that stayed with me from that conference.
In a long-term behavioral study that began at Harvard and continued in Melbourne, rats were trained to escape from a water maze. At Harvard, rats improved steadily across 30 generations – errors dropped from 150 to 20. So far, explainable.
The surprising part: When unrelated rats in Melbourne attempted the same test years later, they began immediately at the high performance level of the Harvard rats – without training, without genetic connection. Sheldrake's interpretation: the behavioral field of the species had been altered globally through morphic resonance.
You don't have to accept this as proof. But it's worth pausing there.
The experiment is documented in: Sheldrake, R. (1988). The Presence of the Past.
The brain as receiver – not storage
This is where things become particularly relevant to the work I do as a coach.
Sheldrake challenges a fundamental assumption of neuroscience: that memories are physically stored in brain tissue. His thesis: the brain doesn't produce memories – it receives them. Like a television that doesn't produce a program, but tunes into a frequency.
Consciousness and memory, in this view, don't exist exclusively inside the skull. They are fields – an extended mind that reaches beyond the physical brain. And here, something resonates that feels very familiar from my own practice.
The connection to the information field – and to our work
TimeWaver works with the concept of the information field – a non-material level at which a person's patterns, blocks, and potentials are stored and accessible. Sheldrake didn't invent this concept. But his work provides a fascinating scientific framework pointing in a similar direction.
If the brain is a receiver – then it makes sense to work not only at the level of consciousness, but also at the level of the field itself. If patterns solidify through resonance – that explains why some blocks are hard to release through conversation alone.
This is not proof. It is a perspective. But it is one I see confirmed again and again in my work with people.
What this might mean for you
Sheldrake's worldview doesn't invite you to believe anything. It invites you to look differently.
What if the patterns you keep experiencing in your life are not only inside you – but in a field you can consciously influence? What if transformation is not only a matter of understanding – but also of tuning in?
I don't ask these questions with ready answers. I ask them because they haven't let me go. Not since that talk in 2014.
Frequently Asked Questions
Certified TimeWaver Coach and founder of QuantumSoul. Wolfgang experienced Rupert Sheldrake in person at a TimeWaver conference and has been inspired by his ideas in his coaching work ever since.