der Post, in The Heart of the Hunter, quotes a Kalahari Bushman as having said to
him, “ There is a dream dreaming us” (Campbell, 1973:8).
7.2 The Scientific View
These ideas have received support from disciplines other than Depth
Psychology, Theology and some new-age philosophies. They have resonance in
recent discoveries in theoretical quantum physics in which the world is conceived of
as relationships and patterns. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin earlier postulated the
existence of the thinking layer, the noosphere, the latest evolutionary part of the
zonal composition of our planet together with the barysphere, the lithosphere, the
hydrosphere, the biosphere that represents the unification of mind and matter (de
Chardin, 1965:200-204).
The British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has expressed his belief that each
species, indeed, nature, has a kind of collective memory which he terms a morphic
field and in which spirit, mind, matter and body are interactive in morphic resonance
and evolve by virtue of habituation. This theory comes very close to that of de
Chardin’s and has elements of Jung’s collective unconscious but most significantly it
unites mind and matter (Sheldrake, 1995:172).
Another remarkably similar theory is postulated by Alexander Eliot in his
explanation of the form of the mythosphere:
... a globe that permeates and envelops our habitual globes of
fire, earth, water and air ... a globe of mindstuff that swirls with
patterns and energies, coruscating with powers of individuals and
groups, symbols and stories (Eliot, 1997:9).
Eliot’s theory seems to combine elements of de Chardin (the latest evolutionary
manifestation), Sheldrake (not governed by timeless laws but rather out of
habituation) and, Jung, in that it is the collective mind-field of conscious beings but,
most important, in Eliot’s model, not just of humans but of the whole of creation:
... including, microbes, bugs, dragons, fairies, elves, goblins,
ghosts, angels, demons, gods, and even Gods, along with us
eternally would-be humans (Eliot, 1997:9).
This statement also seems to parallel the thoughts of I zak Bentov, another
physicist who believed that the human psyche stores information which he called
‘organised energy’ which was needed by Nature “ ... to store in its large information
storage hologram: the universal mind” (Bentov, 1988:7). Somewhat in anticipation