LANZA’S BIOCENTRISM
In his book, “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the keys to understanding the True Nature of the Universe’’ Robert Lanza, a stem cell biologist and a physician wrote in his introductory chapter as follows;
Biocentrism is an emerging paradigm of a revolutionary new view of the universe which posits that life is not an accidental by product of the laws of physics and that life and consciousness creates the universe instead of the other way around.
’’Our understanding of the universe as a whole has reached a dead end. The “meaning” of quantum physics has been debated since it was first discovered in the 1930s, but we are no closer to understanding it now than we were then. The “theory of everything” that was promised for decades to be just around the corner has been stuck for decades in the abstract mathematics of string theory, with its unproven and unprovable assertions. But it’s worse than that.
Until recently, we thought we knew what the universe was made of, but it now turns out that 96 percent of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, and we have virtually no idea what they are.
We’ve accepted the Big Bang, despite the increasingly greater need to jury-rig it to fit our observations (as in the 1979 acceptance of a period of exponential growth, known as inflation, for which the physics is basically unknown). It even turns out that the Big Bang has no answer for one of the greatest mysteries in the universe: why is the universe exquisitely fine-tuned to support life?
Our understanding of the fundamentals of the universe is actually retreating before our eyes. The more data we gather, the more we’ve had to juggle our theories or ignore findings that simply make no sense. Biocentrism proposes a new perspective: that our current theories of the physical world don’t work, and can never be made to work, until they account for life and consciousness.
Biocentrism proposes that, rather than a belated and minor outcome after billions of years of lifeless physical processes, life and consciousness are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the universe. We call this new perspective biocentrism. In this view, life is not an accidental by-product of the laws of physics. Nor is the nature or history of the universe the dreary play of billiard balls that we’ve been taught since grade school.
Biocentrism may seem like a radical departure from our current understanding, and it is, but the hints have appeared all around us for decades. Some of the conclusions of biocentrism may resonate with aspects of Eastern religions or certain New Age philosophies. This is intriguing, but rest assured there is nothing New Age about this theory. The conclusions of biocentrism are based on mainstream science, and it is a logical extension of the work of some of our greatest scientific minds.
Biocentrism cements the groundwork for new lines of investigation in physics and cosmology’’
This article will lay out the principles of biocentrism, all of which are built on established science, and all of which demand a rethinking of our current theories of the physical universe.
The Seven(7) Main Principles of Biocentrism
In the biocentric view, the cosmos is nothing but the manifestation of consciousness. And that all phenomena are but, precipitated Consciousness. Robert Lanza laid down seven main biocentric principles which attempts to buttress the ultimatum of consciousness. This seven main biocentric principles are as follow;
1.The observed depends on the observer: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An ‘’external’’ reality if it existed would by definition have to exist in spacetime. But this is meaningless because ,spacetime is not absolute reality but tools for biological perception.
2.External and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined;
What we perceive externally in our physical universe occurs in the consciousness of a biological observer. Thus all external manifestations are only experienced in the mind. Also all that we perceive in our consciousness has external manifestation. This explicitly means that, both external and internal perceptions are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from another. None can exist in absence of the other.
3.The behaviour of subatomic particles is inextricably dependent on a conscious observer;
The positions and substance of subatomic particles are determined by measurement of a conscious observer. This is revealed in the double slit experiment, where the very act of making an observation at the quantum level, transmute latent possibilities into manifest possibilities. In absence of an observer, subatomic waveparticles exist as superimposed potentials of all possible outcomes.
4.Without consciousness, matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability.
Without the presence of conscious observer, they at best exist in undetermined state of probability waves. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a state of probability.
5.The universe is fine tuned for life.
This makes perfect sense as life creates the universe and not the other way round. The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is simply the complete spatiotemporal logic of the self.
6.Time does not have a real existence outside of biological sense perception
Time is not a hard core object but a process by which we perceive changes in the universe. And there is no perception without a biological entity.
7.Space, like time, is not an object or a thing
Space is another form of our biological understanding and does not have an independent reality of it own. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of of life or Consciousness.
These are the biocentric principles expounded by Robert Lanza in attempt of establishing the scientific fact that, consciousness is the single most fundamental basis of reality and to reaffirm the fact that, Consciousness and Life create the universe and not the other way around.These overarching claims, stand in support of the unmatched role of consciousness at the quantum level as set forth by modern physics and Emptiness Buddhism.
(Excerpts from; Biocentrism:–How Life and Consciousness are the keys to understanding the True Nature of the Universe’’ )