What creates all we know?

If you haven’t heard of the widely respected medical doctor, scientist and philosopher Robert Lanza and his theory on the nature of reality called “biocentrism,” you’re about to.

As for credentials, Lanza heads As- tellas Global Regenerative Medicine and is the chief scientific officer for the organization and an adjunct professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Long a student of the nature of consciousness and reality, he’s come to embrace pretty much the opposite view of what we’ve long believed about what’s “real” beyond what we can detect through our limited senses.

Lanza’s book Biocentrism basically says we humans have long stumbled down the wrong path toward truly understanding the life experience we share.

His theory, increasingly gaining acceptance among physicists and biologists, is that, rather than a physical universe to be perceived as separate from us, our minds actually create it as soon as we observe it all.

Citing well-established quantum principles that contend everything, including our bodies and brains, are comprised of shapeless energy waves that appear to become solid when we observe them, Lanza says it isn’t until we observe something

Yeah, I know, it’s a big ol’ chunk to bite off and mentally chew. But in essence, his biocentric theory puts us and our perceptions at the heart of what we consider reality, while providing a glimpse into a concept of consciousness that for many people finally makes some sense of the nature of reality (and the mystery of consciousness) that has long suffered for logical answers.

Lanza also explains in detail his view of life, death (nothing to fear), and the biology behind what we perceive during our brief stays in these physical bodies.

He says that until recently our presently accepted scientific model claims the universe is a lifeless collection of particles bumping up against each other while obeying murky predetermined rules. “This view holds that life harbors consciousness—a concept poorly understood by science—but it is of little relevance in describing the universe,” he writes.

The problem, he says, is that consciousness isn’t just some byproduct of life. Instead, it is the matrix upon which we comprehend the cosmos. “It is the movie screen upon which our worldview is projected.”

When Nobel physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in 1926 were studying how particles of light called photons reacted in experiments, they soon realized only the presence of an observer determined whether they remained unformed and fuzzy or took definite form. It’s since become clearer, Lanza says, “that attempts to explain the nature of the universe and its origins absolutely requires a worldview in which our presence plays a key role. After all, it is the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things … George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher for whom the university and city were named, came to a similar conclusion: ‘The only things we perceive,’ he famously said, ‘are our perceptions.’”

Therein lies the central theme of biocentrism: We, the animal observers, actually create reality. “This view of the world, in which life and consciousness are central to understanding the universe,” he further explains, “hinges on how subjective experiences interact with physical realities.”

Lanza says he has previously written that reality is not some hard and cold thing, but rather an active process that must involve our consciousness. According to the biocentrism theory, space and time represent the tools our minds use to weave information together into a coherent experience. He calls this the language of consciousness. “In fact, in dreams your mind uses the same algorithms to create a spatio-temporal reality that is as real, 3-D and flesh-and-blood as the one you’re experiencing now,” he writes.

He quotes Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, who, referring to a multitude of scientific experiments, said, “It will remain remarkable that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”

Lanza believes at death we experience “a break in our linear stream of consciousness, and thus in the linear connection of times and places. Indeed, biocentrism suggests it’s a manifold that leads to all physical possibilities.” Increasingly, he says, physicists are accepting the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum physics, which states there are an infinite number of universes.

“Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe,” he says. “Death doesn’t exist in these scenarios, since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The ‘me’ feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But energy never dies; it cannot be destroyed.”

As for us Christians, I don’t find the biocentrism theory necessarily incompatible with the need for a creator. After all, it’s written in the book of John that God’s house (or mansion) has many rooms.

Three biblical passages also refer specifically to the “worlds” God has created, including this from Hebrews: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

More food for food for thought this morning, valued readers.