BIOCENTRISM - AN INTRO

 

Recently I've been very interested and excited to learn about something called 'biocentrism', popularized by a brilliant scientist named Robert Lanza. It deals with the nature of reality and presents a new way of understanding how the universe came into being, how things work, etc. The currently accepted scientific paradigm is something called the 'mechanistic view', the idea that the universe is a giant machine that runs according to certain laws. Physicists have been endeavoring to understand these laws since the dawn of science.

 

The accepted premise is that the universe began to unfold with the 'big bang', and that life is the result of a set of circumstances or conditions that came together more or less by accident. Life then evolves, according to the Darwinian model, into ever more complex forms. In other words, fundamentally, the universe brings about life.

 

Biocentrism says the opposite. It suggests that life comes first and that consciousness is what creates the universe, or more accurately, all of reality. Whereas the study of 'the nature of things' at the most fundamental level has always been the domain of physics, in this case it is a product of the discipline of biology.

 

Of course, for those of us that are familiar with the mystical teachings, this is nothing new. Virtually all of the great mystical traditions, from which grew Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and other religions, as well as shamanic/indigenous traditions, contend that consciousness is what creates reality. The idea that reality is an illusion, a huge 'dream' being manifested by the collective consciousness, is nothing new.

 

Anyone fascinated by the overlap of scientific and mystical information, as I am, has probably been aware that there have been allusions to this idea among certain theoretical physicists studying quantum mechanics. However, physicists are typically very reluctant to come out and say so, even though many quietly acknowledge that physics is failing in its efforts to find the TOA - the Theory of Everything. To most scientists such notions belong to the realm of hocus-pocus and new age nonsense.

 

Though it is not a novel idea, the reason that biocentrism excites me is that it is being publicly promoted by one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet. Robert Lanza is a leading-edge biologist who is at the forefront of several biological fields of study, such as stem-cell research. He is someone that the scientific community takes very seriously. He is causing quite a stir. Those who are disinclined to lend the slightest credence to spiritual traditions are now embracing biocentrism, or at least paying attention - as Lanza makes his case based on scientific evidence. Some are hailing it as an enormous breakthrough, which has implications about the meaning of life, the existence of an after-life, etc.

 

This essay is really only a commercial, urging you to investigate on your own. I may speak more about biocentrism in the future, if I can find a way to synopsize Lanza's work.