A Shift In Scientific Worldview – Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism

Posted on 2 februari 2025 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

‘It’s all in the mind, you know?’
― George Harrison, ‘Yellow Submarine’

● Robert Lanza’s theory of biocentrism posits that consciousness is fundamental to the existence of the universe. He argues that the universe cannot exist independently of observers and that time and space are constructs of the mind. This perspective reverses the traditional view that the universe predates life, suggesting instead that life and consciousness are central to the creation of reality.

● Lanza’s theory is supported by quantum mechanics, which demonstrates that particles exist in a state of superposition until observed. He contends that the observer’s consciousness is crucial in determining physical properties, challenging the notion of an objective reality. This idea is illustrated through quantum experiments showing that observation directly influences particle behavior.

● Biocentrism challenges the materialistic worldview, suggesting that reality is a mental construct. It proposes that time and space are not independent entities and the theory implies that consciousness continues beyond physical death and addresses profound questions about the nature of the universe. Despite its controversy and mixed reactions, biocentrism offers a radical new perspective on the interplay between consciousness and reality.

The Story Of An Exceptional Scientist
The life story of the American stem cell pioneer and visionary scientist Robert Lanza (1956) is exceptional. He grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Stoughton near Boston. His father was a professional poker player with not very gentle parenting methods. He and his sisters had a really hard time at home. From a young age, Robert liked to flee into the vast nature around his city where he thought about the universe. A big question that was already on his mind then was: suppose I wasn’t here, or the other living beings, what would be the point for this place to exist?

He eventually escaped from the hopeless social underclass by throwing himself into science. When he was thirteen, he managed to blacken an albino chicken by modifying the animal’s genes. He won a science competition with it and the experiment was published in the leading scientific journal Nature. It wouldn’t be Lanza’s last stunning performance. In 2001, he became the first scientist to clone a specimen of a nearly extinct species, an Indian type of bison called a Gaur. He did this by injecting 25-year-old animal DNA into an egg and then using this egg to make a regular cow pregnant.

Since the late 1990s, he has devoted himself to regenerative medicine, including stem cell therapy, to cure various diseases. He is currently head of Astellas Global Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Lanza’s pioneering work will contribute significantly to the future cure of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes. blindness, various lung and vascular diseases, Crohn’s disease and other immunological disorders. In 2014, Time Magazine named Lanza one of the most influential people in the world for his stem cell research.

A New Scientific Perspective: Biocentrism
In addition to his work as a medical doctor and researcher, Lanza thinks about the workings of the universe as a whole. He does this mainly in his secluded home on a ten-acre private island in Clinton, Massachusetts, where he has lived alone for twenty years.

In addition to a tropical pool house, he also owns a collection of museum pieces, including a nest of fossilized dinosaur eggs, prehistoric fish and a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite discovered in Venezuela.

But according to his Theory of Everything, ‘biocentrism’, it’s not necessarily the case that this stone has been lying unseen in Venezuela’s clay for billions of years, waiting to be found by archaeologists. According to Lanza’s theory, time – like space – is just an algorithm of our mind, which organizes our observations into logical experiences. So the meteorite is ‘there’ in potential, but it takes an observer to manifest its properties and even its entire history.

The central point of biocentrism is that animal observers are 100 percent necessary to bring the universe into existence. The traditional view that the universe started with the physical materials and that life came onto the scene much later is completely reversed by the stem cell doctor. The source of the universe is consciousness, which produces cells capable of perceiving. Hence the name: biocentrism.

Lanza argues that to make physics work, consciousness cannot be excluded. Reality is a process that takes place within perception, and never outside of it. This is especially obvious in quantum mechanics. Without a living observer there is no ‘external’ reality with time, space and matter. All these elements only exist relative to observers who are essentially creating them. Nothing is external to consciousness. A mindfuck, I know. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that he has apparently devised his theory completely without drugs.

Now let’s take a few steps back and explain how the doctor came to these remarkable conclusions.

Quantum Mechanics & Why Only Observed Phenomena Are Real Phenomena
In the first volume of his ‘Biocentrism’ trilogy from 2010, Lanza first uses basic science to explain why our senses are 100 percent necessary to create physical reality. He peels off the layers of objective reality like you would peel an onion. Sounds are not really sounds until rapid air pressure variations hit the eardrum. No ear-brain system present on the scene? No sound. The same goes for color. Unless electromagnetic waves hit the retina within the eye, there is nothing to see.

But surely we are able to touch all these invisible structures in the external world, right? Not so, explains the doctor. Touch is purely the sensation of energy fields attracting and repelling each other. No solids ever really touch each other as they consist almost completely of empty space.

In other words, the ‘external world’ is completely correlative to our conscious experience of it. And that is without even taking quantum mechanics into account. In order to get ‘matter’ to exhibit physical properties, observation is a requirement. Quantum theory is clear on this: particles are, prior to observation, in a state of superposition. This means that the particles don’t exist in any ‘real’ sense, just as statistical probabilities. We know exactly the odds of when and where a particle will appear after measurement, but before that moment they exist purely as ghost-like entities.

Most scientists still maintain that that doesn’t mean that a ‘conscious’ observer is needed, and that any macroscopic object will do. In his first two biocentrism books however, Lanza clearly describes several quantum experiments that show that consciousness determining reality is the only explanation that really makes sense.

The bottomline of these experiments is that knowledge is always key. Particles can behave as seemingly solid bits of matter or ghost-like waves, and only the observer determines which one of these outcomes it will be. If the researcher knows nothing about which way particles will travel, ‘they’ will always behave as probability waves. But if the researcher acquires which-way information, the outcome will be solid particles.

Lanza (together with co-author Bob Berman) explains that the experiment can be set up in such a way that the only change occurs in the experimenter’s mind. He or she has learned something about the potential photon or electron without in any way disturbing the experiment. The only difference is thus a bit of knowledge and the result of the experiment is completely altered. All knowledge is mental. Therefore, the only conclusion that makes sense, Lanza proposes, is that the universe itself is a construction of consciousness and not a physical one. Animal observers that make the observations are ingrained in the universe, so everything is really ONE and all separation is illusory. Many founding fathers of quantum mechanics and other well known physicists already believed this to be the case:

‘Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.’
― Erwin Schrödinger

‘The very study of the external world leads to the conclusion that the content of consciousness is an ultimate reality.’
— Eugene Wigner

‘We do not assume any longer the reality of a detached observer, but one who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, a new state of the observed system.’
— Wolfgang Pauli

‘The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it – it does not matter that the observer turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.’
— Martin Rees

‘Copernicus dethroned humanity from the cosmic center. Does quantum theory suggest that, in some mysterious sense, we are the cosmic center?’
— Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle further confirms Lanza’s theory. If a particle existed outside the observer you should be able to measure all its properties, but you can’t. Not because of some limitation in the available testing instruments, but because the laws of the cosmos don’t allow it. You cannot possibly know the speed and location of a subatomic particle at the same time. Why not? Why would a particle care about what we know or don’t know?

Lanza’s conclusion: the particle is not outside of us. With our observations, we determine where a particle is, what its properties are and what it does. Lanza writes about this: ‘The entities we observe are floating in a field – a field of mind, biocentrism maintains – that is not limited by the external spacetime Einstein theorized a century ago.’[1]

Time And Space Are Not Fundamental
But if that is really the case, it presents us with a problem. It is after all scientifically determined that the universe existed way before any observer arrived on the scene. Therefore, observers cannot be a requirement for reality to exist. Lanza deals with this ‘problem’ – which is not really a problem but an alteration in thinking – by demonstrating that time and space have no objective existence. Like matter, they are manifested by the observer.

According to Lanza we are mental representations, so space and time must be looked at as mental tools and not as actual things. They are both senses, very much like tasting or hearing or feeling. Space gives us the sense that we are inside an environment we can physically interact with, much like a computer game.

Time is the sensation of witnessing movement and change within the virtual environment we call the universe. Together, the senses of space and time make it seem to us that we are inside the universe, while in reality everything appears in our minds and is thus virtual. A coffeecup is not sitting in your cupboard waiting for you to arrive and take it out. It appears in your mind. The mind is a reality weaver tying everything together: past to present, forms to comprehension, and still frames to motion.

Science has the tendency to divorce the living being from its surroundings and study it as a separate entity. According to Lanza – and this is the central point of biocentrism – this is not possible at a fundamental level: the sensory equipment of the creature is inseparably linked to the existence of the physical universe.

The paragraph in the first biocentrism books that really hit it home for me was this one: ‘Look now at anything. Custom has told us that what we see is ‘out there’, outside ourselves, and such a viewpoint is fine and necessary in terms of language and utility, as in ‘please pass the butter that’s over there’. But make no mistake: the visual image of that butter, that is, the butter itself, actually exists only inside your brain. That is its location. It is the only place visual images are perceived and cognized.’[2]

So there you have it: no external butter, but only the butter that is your own creation. In this context, it is also useful to describe the difference between mind and brain, which is – like the past in which no observers yet existed – a source of confusion when it comes to understanding biocentrism.

According to Lanza, the difference between mind and brain is as follows: ‘The brain is an actual physical object that occupies a specific location. It exists as a spatiotemporal construction. Other objects, like tables and chairs, are also constructions and are located outside the brain. However, brains, tables, and chairs alike all exist in the mind.’

‘The mind is what generates the spatiotemporal construction in the first place’, Lanza continues. ‘Thus, the mind refers to pre-spatiotemporal, and the brain to post-spatiotemporal. You experience your mind’s image of your body, including your brain, just as you experience trees and galaxies. The mind is everywhere. It is everything you see, hear, and sense. The brain is where the brain is, and the tree is where the tree is. But the mind has no location. It is everywhere you observe, smell or hear anything. The mind consists of everything you experience.’[3]

An additional benefit of the theory is that death cannot exist in a biocentric universe. Since our consciousness is part of a field of mind, and since time and space emerge out of this field, it is not possible for consciousness to ever end. When you are born, consciousness is strapped to a spacetime body and a flow of experience is then tied to this body. When it (the body) dies, this continuous flow comes to an end, like a ripple in a pond, but the consciousness that caused it continues.

Reactions To The Theory
Cloning and stem cell research are areas of controversy. Biocentrism is controversial as well because the perspective goes against the current prevailing, materialistic worldview. In response to his book, Lanza received thousands of emails. Some were positive, ‘it has changed my life’ and some were negative.

However, certain arguments against biocentrism indicate that the person in question has not understood the theory. For example, the reaction: ‘If everything is in your mind, why don’t you jump off a building?’ Lanza never claims that the known laws of nature are wrong, just that they belong to the living observer and not to some unproven external domain that keeps on existing even when inexperienced.

Finding Answers To Science’s Biggest Questions
The purpose of biocentrism is to answer deeper questions. Science has a very good grip on scientific laws. Lanza wants to know why they are like that. ‘Science has explained some aspects of reality and religion has explained others. I want a picture in which there are no contradictions.’[4]

Even as a young student, Lanza could never accept the inconsistencies in science that are taken for granted. Where did all the matter to build the universe from, come from? Why are the laws of nature exactly fine tuned for life? How could life arise out of mere chance? Biocentrism places consciousness as the central creator of the universe. Then he goes out to prove his theory through experiments.

Quantum experiments, as described above, support the theory. So do observations of the goldilocks principle or why the universe is exquisitely fine tuned to support life. If observers create reality, they must create one that allows for their existence. If animals would create a universe with weak gravity, we would fall off the earth. If nature’s four forces wouldn’t have exactly the right values we would have never existed. Our universe has exactly the right constants that support life because we are creating them.

People find it hard to wrap their minds around the theory, because it is, A) hard to imagine that the world is not there when you’re not experiencing it, and B) hard to conceptualize something that has no beginning and no end. Like the chicken and the egg, which one came first? Since the question is impossible to answer, the only solution is that they must have emerged together. When they arrived as a construct of consciousness, this is an acceptable end point. There is no need to go beyond consciousness.

Lanza writes: ‘Once an observer exists, the aspects of the universe under observation become forced to resolve into one state, a state that includes a seemingly pre-life earth. This means that a pre-life universe can only exist retroactively after the fact of consciousness. Because time is an illusion of consciousness, this whole talk of before and after isn’t strictly correct, but provides a way of visualizing things.’[5]

Still, many people still don’t understand biocentrism. When I view this topic on platforms like Quora, I often read reactions, such as: ‘We know that certain rocks are older than life, so the theory is completely bogus.’ When that is your counter argument, you are still not thinking about it in the proper way. Time is 100 percent mental. It is relative to the observer. For the observer, the rock may appear to be billions of years old, but it is just an observation and not an absolute truth. All reality is relative and the past isn’t yet the past until observation happened.

Physicist John Wheeler has said that until events are observed at this moment, they didn’t really unfold, but lurked in a blurry, probabilistic state, all ready to become an actual ‘past’ occurrence only upon our current observation. This astonishing possibility is called retrocausality and experiments of the past two decades are confirming that this is how reality works. This breakaway from classical physics is still largely unknown by the general public.

Life is considered as inconsequential in the current scientific paradigm. Biocentrism, on the other hand, considers life and consciousness as indispensable cosmic attributes. But when will this view be accepted as the new standard model?

Lanza: ‘This is not some minor tweak in worldview. Our entire education system in all disciplines, the construction of our language, and our socially accepted ‘givens’ – those starting points in conversations – revolve around a bottomline mindset that assumes a separate universe ‘out there’ into which we have each individually arrived on a very temporary basis. It is further assumed that we accurately perceive this external pre-existing reality and play little or no role in its appearance.’[6]

Conclusion
According to Robert Lanza, the idea that the world exists outside of perception, is nothing but a very convincing illusion. Not one feature of the world, be it mass, color, smell, solidness or an object’s position in space, could be present in the absence of an observer. Biocentrism integrates the act of observation in the way the cosmos operates. This results in a radical new perspective that fits perfectly with all the scientific evidence physics and cosmology have gathered over the past centuries.

However, writes Lanza, biocentrism is not an end point. ‘Rather, it can be viewed as a jumping-off place, a portal to yet deeper explanation and explorations of nature and the universe.’[7] To which I can only say: Let’s go.

PS: To read more about biocentrism, and similar scientific and philosophical perspectives on consciousness and reality, visit: Free-Consciousness.com.

NOTES

1. Lanza, R., Berman, B. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. P. 53

2. Lanza, R., Berman, B. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. P. 36

3. Lanza, R., Berman, B. The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2020. P. 208

4. Robert Lanza featured on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC’s) ‘Ideas’, one of the oldest and most respected radio programs in the world. Host Paul Kennedy has his understanding of reality turned-upside-down by Dr. Robert Lanza in this paradigm-shifting hour. Dr. Lanza provides a compelling argument for consciousness as the basis for the universe, rather than consciousness simply being its by-product. Listen to broadcast
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/biocentrism-rethinking-time-space-consciousness-and-the-illusion-of-death-1.3789414

5. Lanza, R., Berman, B. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. P. 90

6. Lanza, R., Berman, B. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. P. 15

7. Lanza, R., Berman, B. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. P. 141

Review Observer (2023, Robert Lanza, Nancy Kress)

Posted on 10 mei 2023 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

“You are the observer. You create the universe every day, every hour, every nano-second. Everything that can exist, will exist, somewhere, including your beloved dead. They can once again be alive, walking around, solid as the chair you sit in now, solid as this book you hold in your hand.”

In the new science fiction novel ‘Observer’ – written by an actual scientist and a sci-fi writer – the mindblowing implications of quantum mechanics are taken to the next level.

The scientist is Robert Lanza, who in 2009 published his masterpiece ‘Biocentrism’, a non-fiction book about his theory based solely on science that concludes that life and consciousness create the universe, not the other way around. The writer is American science fiction author Nancy Kress, who won several awards for her work, which includes ‘After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall’ and ‘Fountain of Age’.

In ‘Biocentrism’, and its sequels ‘Beyond Biocentrism’ and ‘The Grand Biocentric Design’, Lanza explained how observers (humans and other animals) create physical reality. Without observers, the universe (spacetime and matter) would remain in a state of superposition. Being alive means you are collapsing wavefunctions and you are transforming a cloud of probabilities into one manifest reality.

The premise of ‘Observer’ is that this is indeed how reality works, and a group of scientists has developed new technology which changes the algorithms by which the brain processes information. This enables the characters to create alternative branches of the universe in which their deceased loved ones can once again be alive.

It happens often that new scientific views are communicated to the general public through popular culture. ‘Biocentrism’ has not yet transformed the mainstream scientific view that sees the universe as a huge space filled with marbles that accidentally also contains life and consciousness. ‘Observer’ is a solid attempt to translate the ideas of ‘Biocentrism’ into a compelling science fiction story. It was a smart move to team up with a writer because it has believable characters and reads like a bullet train.

One of the characters is physicist George Weigert who is basically a fictionalized version of Lanza himself. It is he who has developed the biocentric theory which he calls ‘the primacy of the observer’. His main motivation to do it is to see his dead wife Rose again. The main character is surgeon Caroline Soames-Walkins who joins the team on Cayman Brac to perform the operations needed to install the brain-chips that participants need in order to create other branches of the universe. She remains in doubt the whole time about the project and suspects that what the participants see is just an elaborate hallucination. What could convince her of the truth?

The book contains many of the same explanations that ‘Biocentrism’ first pioneered about the true nature of space, time and reality. Sometimes, they have characters explain these concepts in a way that’s not entirely believable. It is obviously Lanza talking. But this is a minor critique. What ‘Observer’ does very well is explaining real, revolutionary science in an understandable way. This doesn’t mean it becomes easy, because as Lanza has pointed out many times; language is a limited tool when it comes to explaining fundamental truths like the illusion of time.

Luckily, you don’t have to fully understand all the science to enjoy the story. If observers indeed create reality, this opens up many staggering possibilities. Some of these are explored in this book, but the writers didn’t overdo it. There is definitely a sequel suspended in superposition in which the future possibilities are explored further. Perhaps ‘Creator’ is a suitable title for this sequel?

More about biocentrism, quantum physics and the true nature of reality: Check out my new platform Free-Consciousness.

Sunday Morning, 9 A.M.: Dialogues on Reality (2)

Posted on 15 augustus 2021 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

By J.H. Kash

Sort of a follow-up to: Thinking, Fast & Slow: Dialogues on Reality (1)

The sky was cloudy and the wind was high. I had trouble keeping my old green Opel Corsa steady as it drifted towards Brussels for what could very well be the most important event of my generation. I was driving on the A27 highway between Amsterdam and Antwerp listening to Business Radio, when reality dawned on me once again. Me driving there was only what it appeared like to me. According to the esteemed scientist Dr. Lanza, who I had the honor of meeting later that day, I was not really driving there at all. I only thought I did in my mind.

The universe is not what we think it is, according to this rebellious thinker. We consider it as a place of sorts, but it is not. Science has revealed that it really is an information system. Within this unimaginable vast system, sentient beings like us are processing information into the appearance of a physical environment. According to Lanza, this environment has no independent existence. We basically create it by observing. Ultimately, the universe resides in our consciousness. Everything does.

To most people this sounds like a bunch of flakey, mumbo jumbo, new age bullcrap. Especially to the crowd Lanza was about to face: physicists. Brilliant people surely, but they were also completely and utterly stuck within an old paradigm. I had seen it before. No matter how much experimental proof you would throw at them, they would refuse to accept it if it didn’t fit within their belief system. This time would be no different.

The event I was heading to was already legendary. Solvay 2027. The International Conference on Quantum Mechanics and the Nature of Reality. Every physicist that really mattered in the world, would be there (once again: or so it would appear). It was legendary for two reasons. One, it would take place exactly hundred years after the most famous Solvay Conference of 1927, where the world’s leading physicists at the time, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger amongst others, met to discuss the newly formulated theory of quantum mechanics, which was groundbreaking in every way. Secondly, the conference would address the most controversial unsolved problem of quantum theory. Namely, what the theory actually tells us about the reality we (seem to) inhabit.

I don’t know the first thing about physics. Let’s get that straight from the beginning. But I do have a head for the philosophical implications of the physical sciences. That is how I got to convince the chief editor of the Scientific Observer magazine to send me to cover this event in the first place. Normally I only write about finance, so I had to bluff my way into this gig. Showed him some philosophical essays, and voila, here I was. I did have to lower my fee considerably. I would even be paying for my own hotel room and expenses. But I figured it would be worth it. If these damn physicists would finally start listening.

Quantum mechanics deals with the very very small: atoms and subatomic particles. And when I say small, I really mean unfathomable tiny. A human cell, which can only be perceived under a microscope, consists of 100.000 billion atoms. Our minds cannot grasp how small that is, just like we can’t imagine how incredibly impossibly huge the universe is. And the structure of atoms is weird as hell. They consist almost completely of empty space. Matter is made up of 99,9999999 percent of empty space with tiny charged particles floating around in the void. The world only seems solid, but at a quantum level there is only energy. Therefore, our senses must be deceiving us: there is nothing solid around us at all.

Quantum physics has been weird from the get-go. To those new to the subject, I always explained the concept of the quantum leap. Take an object, like the car I was driving, and let’s say that I could instantaneously leap with my vehicle from one side of the guard rail to the other without crossing it in any way. So to be clear: not under it, above it or through it. Just like that, I’m driving on the other halfway without having traveled through the space in between. This is the quantum leap: impossible for an object this size, but not for an electron. In nature on the quantum scale, this behaviour is standard operating procedure. Objects can just pop in and out of existence without it being clear where they came from.

And that is only one of the mind blowing features of quantum theory. Another element that is nearly impossible to intuit is what has become known as the measurement problem, which would be one of the main problems discussed at the conference. When we talk about an atom, we imagine something like an extremely small grain of sand, or a stone. But it turns out that it is only like that after it has been measured by a scientist. Before it is measured, it merely exists as a statistical probability. We know it will appear somewhere after measurement – and we can even say with certainty that it will appear here or there. But we cannot know the exact location before measurement. Quantum mechanics is very clear on that. Why is this so? 100 years after the theory was formalized, physicists still don’t know. But Lanza does. Reality only exists when you observe it. Either that, or the universe branches out every time you press the ‘one cup’ button on your espresso machine. There’s no getting around it: the universe is way weirder than we think.

I picked up my jester hat on the passenger chair beside me. It read ‘Brugse Zot’, a beer brand which means something like ‘court jester from Bruges’. I took it from my special collection of funny hats because it was Belgian and I was going to Belgium. I put the thing on my head. The trick to wear a hat like this in the right way is to wear it with a completely serious face. You’re not wearing it as a joke, you’re wearing it because you mean it. Even when people give you a funny look, you smile at them, but not as a joker. Just give them a friendly smile, but never break the poker face. That way you’re sending out the right message: that you are really the real thing. You completely own something that others could never own. You’re the King of the Jokers. And that’s nothing to be sneezed at.

And I felt like a King, because I knew – thanks To Lanza – the secret of the universe. Most people couldn’t see it. Even those who understood physics. Quantum mechanics – the study of matter and energy at atomic scale – gave us since its first discovery one of the greatest revelations ever about the universe. It tells us that the world is not actually made of stuff, but is a mental construction. What we call matter is not composed of steady material, but of statistical probabilities. Indeed, that doesn’t make any sense at all. A statistical probability – let’s say; the chance that you win a million dollars in the lottery next week – is not something concrete. It consists not even of air. It is nothing. And yet, this is exactly what quantum mechanics tells us. Reality is built from nothing tangible. That chair you’re sitting on, that coffee you’re drinking, even that person you are having sex with at night, all these things are not made of anything substantial. Like the chance of winning a lottery. It is composed of atoms, which are nothing more than statistical probabilities. So why do we experience them as steady? Here Dr. Lanza’s theory of biocentrism comes in. He says that reality is not really out there as it appears, but it is actually rendered realtime in our minds. Space, time and the physical world are forms of animal perception.

I took an exit to a McDonalds Drive Thru restaurant nearby the city of Breda. I didn’t have a real breakfast yet, and this holy mission I was on required loads of energy to burn. First I needed a shot. After I parked, I took a grapefruit from my travel backpack and sliced it in half with my kitchen knife. Then I took a bite and pulled out a bottle of vodka from the satchel. I poured some within one half and sucked it dry. I knew I needed something to stay sharp the next three days, and alcohol was then my drug of choice. By using the grapefruits, I would also get my necessary vitamins.

Now it was time for solid food (although this also happens to consist for 99.9999999% of empty space). The only problem was, I’m a vegetarian. And the offer of vegetarian food along the highway is still completely non-existent in this wicked year 2027. Still, in this free will information system we’re in, ordering meat was no option. I learned that from another weird scientist named Thomas Campbell. According to this guy, the consciousness system we are part of operates on free will. It creates physical realities like ours in which sentient beings are supposed to learn and evolve. If the system functions well, the physical world and the creatures in it will slowly evolve and get better. The crucial element here is free will. Without it, we would not be able to make profitable choices and evolve…

So a little later I exited the McDonalds with a goddamn veggie burger in my hands. Not the best possible choice, but still better than the meat. Soon after, I was back on the road with a chocolate muffin and cappuccino for the ride. I figured I had earned that muffin for not going with the meat. I thought excitedly about what I was about to experience. Three days of passionate discussion on reality. I loved it. And finally meeting the man who had changed my perspective on the world so radically. I started to mentally prepare for the interview with Lanza. There really was no question I could think of that I didn’t know the answer to already. ‘So reality is not there when no one is looking?’ That is what other journalists often ask him (those who somewhat understood his theory). This is indeed close to what Lanza is saying. His theory predicts that reality is an active process that always involves a conscious observer. That raised some questions. But I figured, we’ll get there once I get my ass in Brussels. First, I put my focus on the… “Oh shit!”.

I blinked and right in front of me, three cars were coming to a real sudden halt. A fucking pile-up was happening. Time slowed down. Something that I normally call ‘I’ acted all by itself and hit the brakes and gave a major jank at the steering wheel. I flew past the three, four, five crashed cars. Then I laughed like a maniac for evading this heap of crushed metal! But too fast it turned out. Because of the heavy breaking and radical steering, the car made a 180 turn and my car smashed into the guardrail. I was dazed for just a second, then I looked up. Cars were coming at me. Fast like fuck! Several crashes took place before everything, just like that, came to a final standstill. A total of twenty cars had been involved in the pile-up. I got out of my car and started to inspect the damage. The entire side of my car was completely wrecked. Fuck! I realised the implications right away. I was gonna miss my appointment with Dr. Lanza.

END OF CHAPTER 1

Chapter from what might one day become a novel called ObserverWorld. Right now it merely exists in the ocean of possibilities we call the quantum realm. But it might be in the future manifested by a number of conscious agents, including me, Lanza and you dear readers.

Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

Update August, 2024
Did you like this story? Read more stuff like this on my new platform Free-Consciousness.com. (JK)

Review ‘The Grand Biocentric Design’

Posted on 10 januari 2021 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

In 2017 I read the most important book of my lifetime: Biocentrism (2009) by renowned scientists Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. It deserves to have an impact at least as great as Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in the 17th century. And the main message is very similar: space and time are tools of the animal mind. Only how the authors reach their conclusions is different. Kant by brilliant philosophical reasoning. Lanza by backing up these insights by evidence from modern physics and astronomy.

In this third entry in the Biocentrism series (after Biocentrism and Beyond Biocentrism), Lanza wisely added a physicist to his writing team: Matej Pavšič. Also, there is no longer a reference from Deepak Chopra on the cover like there was on the previous books. This ‘name-dropping’ was understandable from the publisher’s position: Chopra can definitely add to the commercial success of any book that challenges the materialistic paradigm. But the science minded crowd is already extremely skeptical of any reference made to consciousness in relation to physics. So, the authors will have to be as credible as they can be to persuade the ones that may be persuaded.

I was already convinced by the first book. Not because of the credentials of the authors – that are extremely impressive – but because of the arguments presented. In the years after reading the mind blowing revelations of the first Biocentrism book, I tried to find counter arguments, but never found them. At least not arguments that cannot be easily refuted (which in this book, the authors do in one of the appendixes). Lanza and his co-authors successfully make their scientific perspective totally compatible with the findings of quantum mechanics and other unsolved mysteries of science.

The core of biocentrism is that consciousness is equivalent to reality itself. It is absolutely fundamental and cannot be reduced. If we accept this fact, everything falls into place. Quantum mechanics reveals that the physical world arises not from interactions, but the awareness of interactions. The mind computes the where and the when objects appear in relation to the observer. An observer with a functioning brain and memory is therefore crucial for the universe to be there. These authors make the case completely obvious.

The first two books were an exploration of how science in the past hundred years has been steadily moving towards this paradigm shattering realization. That conscious life and the cosmos are one and the same and cannot be separated. In the third book Lanza and his co-authors go further to explain how the mind manages the impressive feat of creating reality. The subject matter is complex, but through lucid writing the authors manage to make these ideas understandable for a wide audience.

Also some previously unexplored scientific topics are looked at through biocentric glasses, like Libet’s famous free will experiments that get a completely different interpretation than the usual ‘we are our brains’. They also offer fascinating insights on topics like animal consciousness and dreams. It is really great stuff.

Towards the end, Lanza and co give the readers a good sense of how this new perspective may impact science and what spectacular possibilities it offers for future science. Time travel is just one of them. Lanza and his co-authors did it again. They further improved my understanding of this ’mental thing’ that we’re all a part of. But no matter how much one reads about it or meditates on it, it remains mind-bending stuff. If you want to learn why the exploration of the universe must start within ourselves, this is your definitive guide.