The Physics of Angels. Rupert Sheldrake

of fields at present available within science, we see we’ve got nested hierarchies of fields, or a holarchy of fields.

      The same goes for the electromagnetic fields within a crystal: within the crystal field are the molecular fields; within those, the atomic fields, the fields of the electrons, and the atomic nucleus. These are not only electromagnetic fields but quantum-matter fields.

      In many ways the modern conception of fields has superseded the traditional conception of souls as invisible organizing entities. Up until the seventeenth century even electricity and magnetism were described in terms of souls, stretching out invisibly beyond the magnet or electrically charged body and capable of acting at a distance.

      Fields are a contemporary way of thinking about the invisible organizing principles of nature. Historically, these invisible organizing principles were thought of as souls. The soul of the universe, the anima mundi, has been replaced by the gravitational field. The magnetic soul has been replaced by the magnetic field, the electric soul by the electric field. The vegetative souls of plants and animals, the souls organizing the growth of the embryo and the body, have been replaced in modern developmental biology by morphogenetic fields. The animal soul can be replaced by the fields of instinct and behavior, and our mental activity can be understood in terms of mental fields.

      Matthew: Getting away from the idea that the soul is in the body, let’s just say the body is in the soul. How distant, how near to the horizon can our soul fields roam? In other words, our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, our passions, our knowledge? In some way, everything we’re talking about is encapsulated in our soul field. We can only talk about what we know or imagine we know, and so in many ways our fields, that is, our souls, are growing as we reach to the perimeters of the universe. So there is an awakening of the human field, you might say. We are moving away from the smallness of soul in the pineal gland or cerebral cortex that the modern era gave to soul as the encapsulating dynamic, the consciousness of everything that we can know.

      Rupert: I agree. I think our knowledge does reach out from our brains to include that which we perceive, that which we experience, and that which we know. Our mental fields are vastly larger than our brains, and as our conceptions enlarge and extend, as our sense of the cosmos enlarges, our fields become cosmic in scope.

      Insofar as we see angels as organized holarchically, perhaps we can see them as associated with angel fields. Angels themselves could be thought of as a particulate manifestation of the activity of these fields, just as photons are a particulate way of thinking about the activity, the energy, carried in electromagnetic fields.

      So angelic beings, like quantum beings, may well have a double aspect, a distributed aspect to do with the region of activity with which they’re concerned, and manifestations as quanta of activity.

      Matthew: Somehow we’re talking about photon and field coming together in the light. Angel light.

      Rupert: And their traditional role is as interconnectors, as messengers. The very name angel comes from this meaning of “messenger.” So they’re things that link together; and connecting together is what fields do.

      Matthew: And as messengers, how appropriate they are returning in our time, since we’re rediscovering the habit of the universe known as interconnectivity.

      When we conceived of the universe as being disconnected or isolated, the angels had to go on vacation. Their main task is connecting and interconnecting, and there was not much for them to do within the world machine.

      I like the idea of the angel as connector. The tradition is that some connect in terms of knowledge and guiding, some in terms of healing, some in terms of defending, some in terms of inspiring. So it makes sense, in a time when we’re rediscovering interconnectivity, that these angels who seem to connect one pole of a relation to another are going to have a lot of employment. We should put up a sign: angels needed. There’s plenty of work for angels in a period of interconnectivity.

      Rupert: And of course interconnectivity within fields is not a one-way process. If I have a big magnet with a strong magnetic field, and I place a smaller magnet nearby, the field of the bigger magnet both influences and is influenced by the field of the smaller magnet. If I move the smaller magnet, this affects the entire field.

      Matthew: Now there we have a good analogy for healthy hierarchy or holarchy. There is mutual influence, where the big magnet is not just telling the little magnet what to do, but there’s a give and take.

      Rupert: Gravity, even according to Newton, works on that principle. All matter attracts all other matter in the universe. There’s the idea of a mutual connection there, not just a one-way influence. Following Einstein, we now see this mutual interconnectivity as mediated through gravitational fields, all contained within the gravitational field of the universe, the universal field.

      Insofar as we think of whatever affects us as being mediated through messengers or invisible connections, or angels, then something of what’s happening to us and what’s happening to the world will be conveyed back through the angelic field to more inclusive levels of organization to more inclusive fields of consciousness.

      Matthew: The image of fields is so much healthier to me than the basic image we get of a ladder. A field is three-dimensional.

      Rupert: Angels operate in fields of activity, coordinating and connecting. Material bodies are mutually exclusive—you can’t have two billiard balls in the same place at the same time—but fields can interpenetrate. For example, the room in which we’re sitting is filled with the earth’s gravitational field, which is why we’re not floating in the air. Interpenetrating the gravitational field is the electromagnetic field, through which we see each other, which is also full of radio waves, TV transmissions, cosmic rays, ultraviolet and infrared rays, all sorts of invisible radiations.

      These also don’t interfere with one another. Radio waves interfere with one another only if they’re at the same frequency. But all the radio programs and TV programs in the world can coexist, interpenetrating the same space and not canceling one another out or denying one another. Even if we take only the fields that orthodox science currently recognizes—quantum-matter fields, electromagnetic fields, and gravitational fields—they all interpenetrate. And so the idea of angels as fieldlike allows us to see how they too can interpenetrate.

      Matthew: What I like about the word field is that it is an everyday word. Field has a sense of space to it. It feels like an invitation to play: one plays in a field. Also, things grow in a field. A field is generative; it is a place of life and activity. It’s also about having your feet on the ground. It’s matter, it’s earth, it’s life bubbling up from below. It’s an honoring of the lower chakras. I think fields are a wonderfully rich metaphor for bringing angels down to earth, and yet they are three-dimensional. So I want to honor the word field in its nonscientific connotation. It too speaks to us of something everyday and something welcoming.

      We can also rediscover the meaning of the word receptive. In a way, a field is a mirror. It’s pulling in the light and converting it into life through photosynthesis and into food. Wonderful things come from fields. Obviously all food comes from fields. Pastures and orchards and romping places and ball games. Gaia is a playing of fields. She invites people to play.

      Yesterday, here in London, I was watching football players kicking the ball in Regent’s Park, and I had this experience that Gaia is not just land—Gaia is these two-legged creatures with a rubber ball playing on the land. But for all that play you need fields to play in. And what are relationships? What is a marriage but an effort to create a field? What is a home but a field? Children, bringing new beings into the world, and bearing those who die and everything that passes in between. It’s living life in fields, fields of interconnectivity.

      Rupert: When Faraday first used the word field in science, he was using an ordinary English word that had all these implications already built into it. The primary meaning is agricultural field, and this gives rise to the general sense of a field as a region of activity, as in “battlefield,” “field of interest,” and “field of view.” A field is where you do something. To make fields, the first agriculturalists usually had to cut down the trees. Then they grew things in the cleared space.