[Bo Dahlin]

Hello Jacques

I believe that Sheldrake’s morphic fields contain more than ”mental matter”. I know he has done a lot of studies of how certain ”mental forms” are more easily learned the greater the number of people is who have learnt them before. But he applies the concept to the formation of crystals and also to the formation of plants. And – if I understand him rightly – even to the “form” of natural laws, which he considers to be habits of nature, rather than eternal principles.

I adhere mostly to Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science in these questions, which has also a top-down perspective, like the Indian philosophies you refer to. According to Steiner the etheric energy field is the supernatural realm closest to physical plane. In the human being, Steiner calls this level “the body of formative forces” – Bildekräfteleib. It is also the realm of our mental life, where thought-forms appear and disappear. But the etheric realm as such is of course part of all existence, not only of the human being.

So yes, the question is how to study scientifically this level of being, whether we call it etheric, or formative, or morphogenetic. As long as we have not ourselves developed supersensible perception of these forces, we can only study them indirectly, in terms of what effects they have on the visible plane. Again, I think Sheldrake’s research has some interesting approaches to this problem.

As for the quantum particles they are subnatural, or subphysical – “fallen” forms of the etheric. How do we know that they are eternal? Could it not be that we create them by our testing instruments?