BIOCENTRISM

by Robert Lanza

  one context is wrong in another.

  The same holds for science, philosophy, metaphysics, and cos-

  mology. When a person strictly identifies his only existence with

  his body and is certain the universe is a separate, random, external

  entity, then saying “Death isn’t real” is not only ludicrous, it’s untrue.

  His body’s cells will all indeed die. His false and limited sense of

  being an isolated organism—this will end, too. Claims of an afterlife

  will be met with an appropriately justifiable skepticism: “What has

  an afterlife, my rotting corpse? How?”

  The next level upward has our individual feeling himself to be

  a living entity, a spirit perhaps, ensconced in a body; if he’s had

  spiritual experiences or else religious or philosophical beliefs of

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  an immortal soul being part and parcel of his essence, then now it

  makes more sense for him to accept that something goes on even

  after the body is gone, and he’ll not waver in this view even as his

  atheistic friends deride him for wishful thinking.

  The concept of death has always meant one thing only: an end

  that has no reprieve or ambiguity. It can only happen to something

  that has been born or created, something whose nature is bounded

  and finite. That fine wine glass you inherited from your grandmother

  can have a death when it falls and shatters into a dozen fragments;

  it’s gone for keeps. Individual bodies also have natal moments, their

  cells destined to age and self-destruct after about ninety generations,

  even if not acted upon by outside forces. Stars die too, albeit after

  enjoying lifespans usually numbered in the billions of years.

  Now comes the biggie, the oldest question of all. Who am I? If

  I am only my body, then I must die. If I am my consciousness, the

  sense of experience and sensations, then I cannot die for the sim-

  ple reason that consciousness may be expressed in manifold fashion

  sequentially, but it is ultimately unconfined. Or if one prefers to pin

  things down, the “alive” feeling, the sensation of “me” is, so far as

  science can tell, a sprightly neuro-electrical fountain operating with

  about 100 watts of energy, the same as a bright light bulb. We even

  emit the same heat as a bulb, too, which is why a car rapidly gets

  warmer, even during a cold night, especially when a driver is accom-

  panied by a passenger or two.

  Now the truly skeptical might argue that this internal energy

  merely “goes away” at death and vanishes. But one of the surest axi-

  oms of science is that energy can never die, ever. Energy is known

  with scientific certainty to be deathless; it can neither be created nor

  destroyed. It merely changes form. Because absolutely everything

  has an energy-identity, nothing is exempt from this immortality.

  Staying with the car analogy a bit longer, say you drive up a hill. The

  gasoline’s energy, stored in its chemical bonds, is released to power

  the vehicle and let it fight gravity. As it ascends, it uses fuel but gains

  potential energy. This means that the fight with gravity has yielded a

  stored form of energy, a coupon that never expires even after a billion

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  years. The car can cash in this coupon of potential energy at any

  time, so let’s do it now, by letting the automobile coast down with

  the engine off. As it does so, it gains speed, which is kinetic energy,

  the energy of motion. It is using up its gravitational potential energy

  as it loses altitude but gains kinetic energy. You step on the brakes,

  which get hot, which is another way of saying its atoms are speed-

  ing up—more kinetic energy. Hybrid cars use this braking energy to

  charge their batteries. In short, energy keeps changing forms, but it

  never diminishes in the least. Similarly, the essence of who you are,

  which is energy, can neither diminish nor “go away”—there simply

  isn’t any “away” in which to go. We inhabit a closed system.

  The implications of this recently hit home with the death of

  my sister Christine. I was text messaging with an Associated Press

  reporter as one of the biggest frauds in scientific history started to

  unfold.

  Sat 12/10/05 1:40 PM From Reporter: Bob: it’s all very fishy.

  The edges of Hwang’s cloning paper are falling away and there’s a

  growing feeling that the center can’t hold either. I simply don’t know

  what to make of Hwang’s hospitalization . . . overly dramatic or the

  weight of a fraud soon to be exposed weighing heavily? . . . how is

  this thing gonna bottom out?

  Sat 12/10/05 4:24 PM From Robert Lanza: Life is nuts! My sister

  was just in an auto accident, and has been rushed into surgery with

  major internal bleeding. I just spoke with one of the doctors—they

  don’t think there’s much chance she’s going to make it. All this seems

  so distant and absurd right now. I’m off to the hospital. Bob

  Sat 12/10/05 5:40 PM From Reporter: My God, Bob.

  But my sister didn’t make it. After viewing Christine’s body,

  I went out to speak with several of the family members who had

  assembled at the hospital. As I entered the room, Christine’s hus-

  band—Ed—started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt

  like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I had one foot

  in the present surrounded by tears, and one foot back in the glory

  of nature, turning my face toward the radiance of the Sun. Again,

  as during the aftermath of Dennis’s accident, I thought about the little

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  episode with the glowworm, and how every creature consists of

  multiple spheres of physical reality that pass through space and time

  like ghosts through doors. I thought too about the two-slit experi-

  ment, with the electron going through both holes at the same time. I

  could not doubt the conclusions of these experiments: Christine was

  both alive and dead, outside of time, yet here in my reality I would

  have to deal with this outcome and no other.

  Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man who

  she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her

  wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for

  several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to

  an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding

  was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Because no

  one from our side of the family showed up except for me, Christine

  asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.

  Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the

  dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black

  ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a bank of snow.

  “Ed,” she had said, “I can’t feel my leg.”

  She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood

  was rushing into her peritoneum.

  Soon after the death of his son, Emerson wrote, “Our life is not

  so much threatened as ou
r perception. I grieve that grief can teach

  me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.” By striving to

  see through the veil of our ordinary perceptions, we can come closer

  to understanding our profound relationship to all created things—all

  possibilities and potentialities—past and present, great and small.

  Christine had recently lost more than a hundred pounds, and Ed

  had bought her a pair of diamond earrings as a surprise. It’s going to

  be hard to wait—I have to admit—but I know Christine is going to

  look fabulous in them the next time I see her . . . in whatever form

  she and I and this amazing play of consciousness assume.

  where do we go

  20

  from here?

  Biocentrism is a scientific change in worldview that invites incor-

  poration into existing areas of research. It offers short-term and

  longer-term opportunities, both to demonstrate biocentrism’s

  own truth, and to use it as a springboard to make sense of aspects of

  biological and physical science that are currently insensible.

  The most immediate evidence of biocentrism will arrive with the

  never-ending creation of new and cleverer quantum theory experi-

  ments, as they expand into the macrocosmic. Already, QT experi-

  ments have intruded into the visible, as we have described in an

  earlier chapter. As such demonstrations increasingly grow into the

  macroscopic realm, it will be untenable to “look the other way”

  when it comes to observer-influenced outcomes. In short, QT will,

  on its own, require an explanation for its strange results—and the

  most logical will be biocentrism.

  In 2008, in an article in the journal Progress in Physics, Elmira

  A. Isaeva said, “The problem of quantum physics, as a choice of one

  alternative at quantum measurement and a problem of philosophy as

  to how consciousness functions, is deeply connected with relations

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  b i o C e N T r i s m

  between these two. It is quite possible that in solving these two

  problems, it is likely that experiments in the quantum mechanics

  will include workings of a brain and consciousness, and it will then

  be possible to present a new basis for the theory of consciousness.”

  This—in a physics journal!

  The article then goes on to discuss the “dependence of physi-

  cal experiment on the state of consciousness.” Such mainstream

  acknowledgments of the role of consciousness and the living in pre-

  viously assumed to be physics-alone areas will continue to multiply

  until they become the established paradigm rather than a bother-

  some offshoot.

  Toward this end, the proposed scaled-up superposition experi-

  ment will see whether the weird quantum effects observed at the

  molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels apply just as strongly in truly

  large macroscopic structures—at the levels of tables and chairs. It

  would be interesting to confirm or deny that macroscopic objects lit-

  erally exist in more than one state or place simultaneously until per-

  turbed in some way, after which they collapse out of “superposition“

  to just one outcome. There are many reasons why this might not

  happen experimentally, chief among them the noise (interference

  from light, organisms, etc.), but whatever outcome occurs, it should

  be revelatory.

  The second, allied area of biocentric research is of course in the

  realm of brain architecture, neuroscience, and specifically conscious-

  ness itself. Here, the authors are hopeful but not optimistic about

  short-term progress, for the reasons outlined in chapter 19.

  A third area is the ongoing research into artificial intelligence,

  which is still in its infancy. Few doubt, however, that this century, in

  which computer power and capabilities keep expanding geometri-

  cally, will eventually bring researchers to confront the problem in

  a serious, practical, useful way. When that happens, it will become

  clear that a “thinking device” will need the same kind of algorithms

  for employing time and developing a sense of space that we enjoy.

  The development of such sophisticated circuitry will reveal—

  w H e r e d o w e g o f r o m H e r e ?

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  probably faster than human brain research can—the realities and

  modalities of time and space as being entirely observer-dependent.

  It will also be interesting to keep an eye on the ongoing experi-

  ments into free will. Biocentrism neither demands there be indi-

  vidual free will, nor rejects it—though the former seems more

  compatible with an over-arching, consciousness-based universe.

  In 2008, experiments by Benjamin Liber and others, building on

  their earlier work alluded to previously, demonstrated that the brain,

  operating on its own, makes which-hand-to-raise choices that are

  detectible by observers watching brain-scan monitors up to ten sec-

  onds before the subject has “decided” which arm to hold up.

  Finally, one must consider the endless ongoing attempts at creat-

  ing GUTs—grand unified theories. Currently, such efforts in physics

  have been maddeningly lengthy—stretching typically for decades—

  without much success except as a way of financially facilitating the

  careers of theoreticians and grad students. Nor have they even “felt

  right.” Incorporating the living universe, or consciousness, or allow-

  ing the observer into the equation, as John Wheeler insists is neces-

  sary, would at minimum produce a fascinating amalgam of the living

  and non-living in a way that might make everything work better.

  Currently, the disciplines of biology, physics, cosmology, and

  all their sub-branches are generally practiced by those with little

  knowledge of the others. It may take a multidisciplinary approach

  to achieve tangible results that incorporate biocentrism. The authors

  are optimistic that this will happen in time.

  And what, after all, is time?

  AppendIx 1

  the lorentz tr AnsformAtIon

  One of the most famous formulas in science came from the dazzling

  mind of Hendrik Lorentz, near the end of the nineteenth century. It

  forms the backbone of relativity, and shows us the fickle nature of

  space, distance, and time. It may seem complicated, but it is not:

  ΔT = t√1-v²/c²

  We’ve expressed this for computing the change in the perceived

  passage of time. It is actually much simpler than it appears. Delta or Δ means change so ΔT is the change in your passage of time—what

  you yourself perceive. Small t represents the time passing for those

  you left behind on Earth, let’s say one year—so what we’re after is

  how much time passes for you (T) while one year elapses for every-

  one back in Brooklyn. This simple “one year” of t (in this example)

  should be multiplied by the meat-and-potatoes of the Lorentz trans-

  formation, which is the square root of 1, from which we subtract

  the following fraction: v², which is your speed multiplied by itself,

  divided by c², which is the speed of light multiplied by itself. If all

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  speeds are expressed in matching units, this equation will tell you

  how your time slows down.

  Here’s an example: If you travel twice the speed of a bullet,

  or one mile a second, then v² is 1 × 1 or 1, which is divided by

  the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times itself, yielding

  35,000,000,000 and yielding a fraction so small it’s essentially noth-

  ing at all. When this nothingness is subtracted from the initial 1

  in the equation, it’s still essentially 1 and because the square root

  of 1 is still 1, and remains 1 when multiplied by the one year that

  passed back on Earth, the answer naturally remains 1. That means

  that traveling at twice the speed of a bullet, or one mile a second,

  while it may seem fast, is actually too small to change the passage of

  time relativistically.

  Now consider a fast speed. If you’ve managed to travel at light-

  speed, the fraction v²/c² becomes 1/1 or 1. The expression inside the

  square root sign is then 1-1, which is 0. The square root of 0 is 0, so

  now you multiply 0 by the time experienced back on Earth, and the

  answer is 0. No time. Time has been frozen for you if you move at

  lightspeed. Thus, you can insert any number for “v” and the formula

  will yield how much time passes for a traveling astronaut while a

  given time passes on Earth. This same formula also calculates the

  decrease in length for a traveler, if one substitutes L (length) instead

  of V (speed). It will also work to compute mass increase the same

  way, except at the conclusion one must divide the result into 1 (find

  the reciprocal) because unlike time and length, which decreases,

  mass increases with greater velocity.

  AppendIx 2

  eInsteIn’s rel AtIvIt y

  And BIocentrIsm

  The “space” that plays one of central roles in Einstein’s relativity can

  be easily derived scientifically to be replaced as a standalone entity,

  leaving the practical conclusions of relativity intact and still func-

  tioning. What follows is a physics-based explanation for this, with

  most math eliminated. Nonetheless, it is rather dry, and we recom-

  mend it mainly for occasions when unexpectedly stuck in a bus ter-

  minal for more than two or three hours.