The Mystery of Being Watched

Intromission vs Extramission

Have you ever felt the piercing gaze of an unseen eye and turned to find someone staring intently at you? This universal sensation, experienced by a vast majority across different cultures, is not just a figment of the imagination. Indeed, a fascinating new article by Rupert Sheldrake claims 80% of women and nearly three-quarters of men in Britain, the US and Scandinavia report experiencing this uncanny feeling.

I have certainly felt it, have you?

Authors have often picked up on this sensation in their writing. For example, in 1880 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “At breakfast this morning I suddenly had that vague feeling of uneasiness which overcomes some people when closely stared at, and, quickly looking up, I met his eyes bent upon me with an intensity which amounted to ferocity”.

According to the article, you can ask any private detective or celebrity photographer and they will tell you the same thing. Even if you are looking at somebody using long-range binoculars, very often they will turn and look directly at you, even if they can’t directly see you.

Is this just pseudoscience or is pseudoscience just the name for science that hasn’t been explained yet?

I was having a debate with some people the other day and I was trying to explain to them that their reality is just subjective and what they consider to be the ‘real world’ may not be that at all. I explained that light waves bounce off an object, hits out eyeballs and gets converted into an image by our brains. What most people think of as real, is in fact just an illusion, created by our brains.

American cognitive psychologist, Donald Hoffmann, argues that evolution directs our senses to allow us to best survive in this world but survival doesn’t necessarily mean understanding the complexities of reality. He uses the example of a computer screen and icons to suggests that our brains work in similar ways. If, instead of an icon on the screen, we saw all the computer code behind it, it would slow us down considerably but instead, we see a ‘W’ icon, click on it and we can begin typing in Word instantly. If, in the real world, we actually perceived reality, then perhaps we would be eaten by a predator before we had translated that code as meaning a hungry wolf!

But what if our brains translating reality isn’t the whole picture? What if our brains actually create some of that reality?

The theory that our brains interpret the inward movement of light, called intromission, may actually be only part of the equation. And one of the reasons I may have found my debate difficult is that many people find the concept of intromission difficult to understand, even counter-intuitive. According to psychologists at Ohio State university, even when the concept is explained to them, the majority of students struggle with the idea.

Even when told other explanations of how vision worked was a ‘fundamental misunderstanding’, after a few months they slipped back into thinking that what we see is projected all around us. They intuitively felt that sight happens outside us as well as in the brain.

Our modern theory of intromission is actually the opposite to what the ancients used to believe. Extramission is an ancient theory tracing back to Greek philosophers such Euclid and Ptloemy. They thought that vision involves rays emitted from the eyes onto objects, which then reflect back, allowing us to ‘see’ them. Whilst this idea has largely been dismissed by contemporary science, it resonates with our intuitive understanding of vision - feeling as though sight extends outward from our eyes into the world.

Could the interplay between intromission and extramission explain why many people feel when somebody is watching them? Could their eyes be sending out some energy that we can subconsciously perceive?

Rupert Sheldrake believes so but who is Sheldrake?

Sheldrake is a British biologist and author known for his controversial theories in the field of science. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University and philosophy and history of science at Harvard before returning to Cambridge to complete his PH.D. in biochemistry.

Sheldrake's most notable, and certainly most contentious, contribution to science is the hypothesis of "morphic resonance." This concept, introduced in his 1981 book "A New Science of Life," suggests that there is a kind of collective memory in nature. According to Sheldrake, this memory is transmitted through non-physical fields known as "morphic fields," which influence the development and behaviour of organisms and are shaped by past forms and behaviours. This theory implies that similar patterns of growth, behaviour, and thought are easier to "tune into" over time, and this can span across time and space without a direct physical connection.

Critics often dismiss Sheldrake’s ideas as pseudoscience due to a lack of empirical support and because they contravene established principles of biology and physics. The concept of morphic resonance, for instance, challenges the conventional understanding of genetics and cell biology. The hypothesis posits that memory and learning are not solely brain-based but are instead collective phenomena shared among species through these fields.

However, Sheldrake claims to have empirical evidence for the feeling of being watched. Furthermore, he points out that the sense of being watched seems to be ‘directional’, suggesting that like a sound wave, we can perceive where it is coming from. It would be interesting to see whether blind people also perceive this phenomenon.

He says that the most obvious idea is that our skin acts as some sort of sensor. And this makes sense. Within the last month, scientists have discovered that bottlenose dolphins possess an electric seventh sense. This newly discovered sense allows the dolphins to perceive weak electric fields, potentially playing a role in navigation and communication.

Dolphins are able to do this due to vibrissal pits, which are areas on the skin where whiskers have fallen out. Similar structures have been found to exist in the human upper lip so perhaps these are able to sense similar weak electric fields.

However, as Sheldrake points out, most of us are fully clothed in public and so this might not explain the feeling of being watched. Furthermore, we often sense when someone behind us is staring, therefore it can’t be the upper lip that is detecting anything.

Instead, Sheldrake believes there is a weak electromagnetic field around our bodies. He thinks that this field registers disturbances when people look at us and whilst we aren’t actively aware of it, the ‘biofield’ picks it up.

If this phenomenon is real, Sheldrake speculates that this ability would have developed for two evolutionary reasons. The first is for self-defence - knowing if a predator is about to attack. And the second is sexual - it’s an advantage to know who is interested in us.

This also happens with animals. Sheldrake gives the example of a photographer looking up and noticing deer staring on the skyline. The skyline hadn’t been scanned for the deer but instead the photographer had looked up straight at them.

The recent discovery of the seventh sense in dolphins shows that these ideas should never be written off as pseudoscience. Ancient Greeks believed this is how sight works and instinctively, people feel the conventional explanation is unnatural.

Dr. Sheldrake is now looking at whether this phenomenon occurs with CCTV. So if you have any examples of feeling someone watching you through a camera (or any anecdotes of feeling someone watching you) then tell us your story in the comments below and I will pass the details on to him.