I think what Sheldrake is unwittingly talking about is actually the spirit. Of course, he wouldn’t admit that because suddenly God becomes the center of reality - something the intellectualoids don’t want to think about.
It’s been decades since I read Sheldrake’s first book; but it seemed to me that he was suggesting that all of Creation is permeated by a kind of intelligence. I don’t find that “pantheistic” or incompatible with belief in a self-aware Creator God who is also a personal one.
I don’t think it’s forever beyond the possibility of scientific investigation, either.
(Sheldrake is not an atheist. He outgrew that. And I do believe that he was thinking of Spirit, as someone else suggested; not ‘spirits’.)
-JT