For more see Rupert’s Substack article on this topic
👉 https://rupertsheldrake.substack.com/p/animal-warnings-of-earthquakes

Recorded on November 4, 2017 at the Society for Psychical Research in London.

When disasters strike, it is often animals who seem to know first. Long before seismographs were invented, people noticed that snakes, rats, dogs, and birds behaved strangely in the days leading up to earthquakes. Similar reports come before tsunamis, avalanches, air raids, and even medical crises like seizures. Are these simply heightened senses—an ability to detect tremors, gases, or subtle vibrations—or do they point to something deeper, an anticipatory awareness we do not yet understand?

In this talk, I share some of the evidence I’ve gathered over the years: from ancient Greek accounts to modern field studies, from the Chinese earthquake networks under Mao to the toads of central Italy abandoning their mating grounds days before a quake. The pattern repeats across cultures and circumstances, yet mainstream science has largely dismissed it as superstition.

Why is that? What are we overlooking when we ignore such a consistent body of observations? Could systematic study of animal behavior, especially with today’s global communications, provide early warnings and even save lives?

I don’t claim to have the answers. But I invite you to explore these questions with me, and to consider what they reveal not only about animals, but about our shared sensitivity to the unseen.

What if the “weird” feelings we shrug off—being watched, knowing who’s calling, waking seconds before an alarm—aren’t glitches but signals? In this talk, given at the How The Light Gets In festival, September 21st, 2025, Rupert Sheldrake argues that these everyday hunches point to mind-to-world reach (projective vision), mind-to-mind links (telepathy), and mind-to-future sensitivity (presentiment). How do we decide what counts as evidence, who gets to ask taboo questions, and how science should treat common human experiences? Beyond anecdotes, Rupert shares simple experiments, huge natural-history datasets, and a working picture of mind as something that reaches, bonds, and anticipates—often strengthened with emotional closeness. He flags practical paths forward: citizen science, the Eyesense Training app to sharpen sensitivity, and real-world applications from caregiving to early-warning via animal behavior.

Try the Eyesense Training app
👉 https://eyesense.training

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👉 https://rupertsheldrake.substack.com

A dialogue on praying for ancestors and on pilgrimage: Hollyhock, Cortes Island, BC; August, 2016.

See Rupert’s Substack for the Latest articles and early access to videos
👉 https://rupertsheldrake.substack.com

For many people, Christianity is like a toxic brand. Why is this so and what can be done about it? A dialogue with Marc Andrus, the Bishop of California, at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; September, 2015.


See Rupert’s Substack for the Latest articles and early access to videos
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A dialogue with Marc Andrus, former Bishop of California, at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, in August of 2016.

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Watch on Substack
https://open.substack.com/pub/rupertsheldrake/p/psychedelic-experiences-what-insights

This is a talk I gave recently to the Drug Science and Bioscience Societies at the University of York.

I first became interested in psychedelics when I was at school in the 1950s and a young doctor friend was involved in some of the early research on the effects of LSD. When I was 17, before going to Cambridge, I worked in a pharmacology research lab on the effects of LSD and mescaline on chicks. However, it was not until 1970, when I was 28, that I experienced the mind-opening effects of LSD for myself.

In the 1980s, I became friends with Terence McKenna, an expert on the shamanic use of psychedelics, and Ralph Abraham, a chaos mathematician at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We had many discussions about the effects of these substances, including their influence on the growth of computer graphics. I also attended a series of conferences on psychedelics at the Esalen Institute in California and have been in continual contact with recent researchers on the subject.

In this talk, I discuss the nature of psychedelic visions, their possible relationship to dreams and near-death experiences, and the ‘entities’ that many people encounter through them, including machine elves and angels. I look at the cultural history of their use, the emergence of new psychedelic religions such as Santo Daime in Brazil, and suggest that the current psychedelic renaissance is part of a major cultural shift—away from materialism towards a more interconnected worldview.

A talk delivered to the Conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality, University of Northampton, UK in June 2025.

The INSS is a unique international network for people interested in bringing the study of spirituality to life through research, scholarship, education and practice.

https://spiritualitystudiesnetwork.wildapricot.org/conference-2025

In this talk, Rupert Sheldrake explores panentheism—the idea that the divine is not separate from the world but present throughout it, while also transcending it. With the grip of mechanistic materialism loosening, Rupert invites us to reconsider how we see nature, mind, and spirit. Tracing a broad arc from ancient philosophies and Christian mysticism to AI-generated worldviews, panpsychism, and psychedelics, he reflects on how the sacred presence in nature—-long affirmed by spiritual traditions-—is re-emerging through science, experience, and renewed practices of attention.

Recorded at St James Church, Piccadilly, a longstanding hub for open spiritual inquiry and progressive theology in the heart of London.

Rupert’s Substack
Latest articles, early access to videos, exclusive talks
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