Have you ever had the feeling of being watched? Over 80 per cent of the population have experienced the sense of being stared at. Conversely, most people have found they can make others uneasy by looking at them, even from behind. Recent experiments have provided hugely significant evidence for the reality of this sense. Somehow our intentions, and our attention, reach out to touch what we are looking at. Our minds are not confined to our brains. Once the influence of the mind is admitted to extend beyond the head, other well-known but seemingly mysterious phenomena begin to make sense, such as telepathy, phantom limbs and mind over matter effects. Sheldrake shows that telepathy depends on social bonds. He traces its evolution from the connections between members of animal groups such as flocks, schools and packs. In the modern world telepathy occurs most commonly just before telephone calls. He summarises startling new experimental evidence for the reality of telephone telepathy, and shows how readers can do tests for themselves. Drawing on his own experiments and extensive research, Sheldrake puts the overwhelming evidence for these unexplained abilities in the context of what he calls 'the extended mind', which he suggests is fundamental to our perception. Above all, the hypothesis of the extended mind provides a refreshingly new way of thinking about ourselves and our relationships with other people, with animals, and with the world around us.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake continues to charter a new course in our understanding of the non-local mind that connects all of us. His scientific explorations and his elegant theories are bringing us to a closer and more experiential knowledge of the luminous mystery in which we are all bathed. The application of this understanding has the potential to heal our world. --Deepak Chopra, M.D., author of How to Know God and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

From the Hardcover edition.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than sixty technical papers and nine books, including Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home. A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he took a PhD in biochemistry, and philosophy at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco, and lives in London with his wife and two sons.