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Time-space and the Etheric Template Body: Formative Causation and Morphic Fields Rebooted

Formative Causation and Morphic Fields

The hypothesis of formative causation sees the inheritance of not just genetics, but physical form and mental and behavioural patterns in terms of the inheritance of organizing fields possessing a form of in-built “memory.” Thus a living human inherits not just genetic elements from its parents, but also habits of development and behaviour from past members of their own species, as well as the ancestral species from which theirs has arisen.[1] These organizing fields biologist Rupert Sheldrake refers to as morphic fields—a more general and inclusive term than the more specialized “morphogenetic field” (relating more specifically to fields modulating genetic expression).

The process by which what we view as the “past” influences the present via morphic fields is referred to as morphic resonance. This process involves the transmission of formative causal influences in a spatially and temporally nonlocal fashion, such that morphic fields possess a cumulative “memory.” In other words, morphic fields can influence themselves and each other over any spatial distance or any “length of time,” suggesting that the past does not merely recede into our memories, but remains present in some causal capacity, where it can influence present activity. This suggests a three-dimensional (holographic) view of time, rather than a one-dimensional “flow” or “arrow” of time in which the past fades into nothingness and the future likewise has no real existence. Instead, there is only the eternal now in which all moments are nested.

A Link to the Etheric

While Sheldrake’s model undermines the very foundations of the mechano-materialist worldview from which all traces of teleology have been banished, it is certainly not without support. In fact, the mechano-materialist view of the universe as a closed system has been thoroughly discredited. In short, observable facts demand a worldview similar to that postulated by Sheldrake.

Retired theoretical physicist and self-styled “quantum activist” Dr. Amit Goswami has also observed that “living organisms display ‘program-like’ behaviour giving away their secret—that they have another body that consists of the feels behind the programs that living organisms are capable of running.” This other “body” Goswami believes is the “vital” or etheric body written about for centuries by seers and occultists.[2]

Russian author, scientist, and developer of the Gas Discharge Visualisation (GDV) diagnostic technique Dr. Konstantin Korotkov agrees, stating that the existence of this hidden “program” makes an organism on the verge of embryogenesis “run through” all previous stages of development of the species to which the organism belongs.[3] For instance, we all pass through a stage of embryonic development in the womb in which we have gill slits.

Sheldrake has carefully articulated the need to postulate invisible programs guiding morphogenesis/form-making based partly on the fact that our genes do not have the instructions for morphogenesis built into

them. The Human Genome Project found our genome to consist of a mere 23,688 genes: almost 100,000 short of the expected number.[4] In sum, DNA does not contain the assembly plan for arranging proteins into an ordered physical form. It does not contain all the information required to build an organism, let alone maintain it! Thus, DNA primacy is revealed as another materialist illusion. Something else, some kind of purposive formative influence must be present—a field of influence that just may be observable given the correct apparatus—an “etheric body” perhaps. The etheric body constitutes one particular kind of morphic field occupying its own particular frequency domain close to the physical realm (it is actually a part of the physical dimension, according to occultists and seers).

According to independent researcher and writer Tom Montalk, processes that seem mechanical and predictable on the large scale have their origins in quantum jumps that are neither predictable by physical science nor controllable by purely physical means. The etheric body is the “extra factor…that biases these quantum jumps at the small scale to offset the forces of entropy at the large scale.” Thus, the etheric body is “an energy template that biases the probability of acausal biological events to produce ordered and intelligent life.”[5] This formative field is made of what the Hindus have known for millennia as prana (Sanskrit), and what the Chinese call Chi/Qi. In much occult literature, particularly that of theosophy, the etheric body is referred to as the etheric double, a duplicate of the physical body in every way, though existing in a higher frequency domain invisible to normal human vision.

Like Sheldrake’s morphic fields, the etheric body operates probabilistically rather than deterministically and mechanically. If the etheric realm can be thought of as an inverted/reciprocal or “mirror” counterpart of ours, where time in fact “runs backwards” in some sense, then it would act as another influence biasing probability by “pulling” on the physical from what we think of as the future.[6] Likewise, Sheldrake grants the possibility of this “backwards through time” dynamic for morphic fields, even though they simultaneously become increasingly “conditioned” by the “past” with each moment, becoming temporally self-similar (nonlocally through time). Paradoxically, morphic fields behave as if goal-directed, seemingly being pulled on from the “future” to achieve a specific end, simultaneously being influenced by the accumulated “momentum” of their own species’ history, along with their own individual history.

The habitual operations of morphic fields for physical organisms have an etheric basis because repeated behaviours set up a type of momentum in the etheric plane/density that biases probability towards continuation of that behaviour. In Sheldrake’s model, “[m]orphic fields are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance from previous similar morphic units, which were under the influence of fields of the same kind. They consequently contain a kind of cumulative memory and tend to become increasingly habitual.”[7] 

Through the Eyes of a Seer

As noted, the notion that etheric fields lie behind the morphogenesis of physical organisms is gaining popularity and scientific plausibility, not least of all because of the modern technology that allows us to photograph electromagnetic effects created by these fields.[8] Author and researcher Jay Alfred has written of the role played by the etheric body or “bioplasma” field in this context: 

There is mutual affinity between the bioplasma and physical-biomolecular bodies…[T]he bioplasma fetus wraps around the physical-biomolecular embryo while undergoing an accelerated morphogenesis (relative to the physical-biomolecular embryo). The physical-biomolecular body therefore is cued by the [etheric] bioplasma body which acts [as] an electronic matrix and a time-resolved hologram that guides its development.[9] (emphasis added) 

To Alfred, biological evolution could not have occurred on Earth without the aid of subtle bioplasma bodies interacting with biochemical fields via weak electromagnetic (EM) fields. It is their interaction with (and/or creation of) EM fields that allows us to partially photograph “subtle bioplasma bodies” with specially designed equipment, as detailed in TGI 1.

Having identified the importance of the plasma-like etheric morphic field in morphogenesis, we have solved only a part of the mystery. Obviously this scenario begs the question of the origins of etheric fields—and this is where we are forced to dive deep into the proverbial rabbit hole in search of answers. Occultists and 

seers have brought a great deal of insight to us over the years regarding the multidimensional nature of man and his universe—insight that has been overwhelmingly shunned by a somnambulant scientific community addicted to a thoroughly reductionist epistemology, and an ontology vigorously opposed to seeing a conscious and living universe for what it is.

The work of Barbara Brennan, a former atmospheric physicist who now writes, speaks, and works as a clairvoyant healer (and is the founder of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing), is of particular relevance to the concept of morphic fields, and takes the theoretical work done by scientists like Sheldrake deep into realms obscure to almost all other scientists (who lack the necessary psi faculties to access them). Based on her direct clairvoyant observations, Brennan offers a map of the human being that includes (in ascending order) a physical body, etheric body, emotional body, mental body, etheric template body, astral body, celestial body, and causal body (plus two more beyond this that we need not concern ourselves with here).

Notice the presence of an “etheric template body” which is “higher” in the scheme of things than the etheric double which we have spoken of thus far. This “body” is a higher-dimensional template for the lower-dimensional etheric body which, in truth, appears to be part of our space-time reference frame, and is generally considered to be “physical” in nature, though of a subtler, harder to perceive physicality than ordinary matter. What is the nature of this etheric template body then?

Brennan states that this is the blueprint of the perfect form for the better known etheric field to take. She compares its appearance to the negative of a photograph; this toroidal field consists of a matrix of clear or transparent lines (in the 3D form of a human body) on a cobalt-blue background of “solid space,” similar to an architect’s blueprint. Brennan describes the process that creates this form as being the result of an infinite number of planes coming from all directions and filling in all space except for a spherical area which is left empty. This empty sphere is a “negative space” in which the etheric field/double can exist and which then forms the grid structure that guides physical morphogenesis.[10]

This scenario of (morphic) fields nested within fields is exactly what Sheldrake’s theory of formative causation predicts, and is exactly what we would expect to see if manifest reality emerged from an underlying field of potential that is in some way “holographic” (with information distributed throughout it in a nonlocal fashion). Every single “body” listed by Brennan (and other clairvoyants) is a particular kind of morphic field which facilitates and influences particular aspects of human expression (physical, emotional, mental, etc.).

Austrian philosopher, architect and esotericist, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925)—a man gifted with his own considerable powers of clairvoyance—explained in his book An Outline of Occult Science (1909) that to “supersensible” (psychic) perception, the presence of, for example, a stone in the “spirit world,” would be indicated by a kind of cavity, an apparent absence of form or “negative space,” much as described by Brennan: “Around this cavity, however, the force is visible that gives form to the stone.” It appears that Steiner may also have been tuning in to what Brennan refers to as the etheric template level, a reciprocal reality that is a kind of inversion of our own. Objects Steiner viewed here appeared as the antithesis of the form they possessed in the physical world[11] —not unlike the negative of a photograph as compared to the developed image (the analogy Brennan employs).