Fair warning: Skeptics probably should skip today’s scribblings and ignore Socrates’ admonition that an unexamined life isn’t worth living. Those with open minds likely will find it rather amazing and comforting.
Dr. Robert Lanza, a Massachusetts medical doctor and scientist in regenerative medicine whom the New York Times reportedly named the planet’s third most important living scientist, has written an intriguing book that contends quantum physics demonstrate how consciousness pervades the universe and survives when our bodies fail.
Lanza also says consciousness is what creates the universe rather than the other way around. The controversial theory is outlined in his latest book, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. And Lanza preaches this with the fervor of a Southern evangelist. He’s come to believe, based on quantum studies and advancements, that universal intelligence existed before matter came into existence.
Hmm, wait just a second here. Where have I read that same pronouncement? Something about in the beginning was the Word?
This scientist believes the universe (from its constants to its energy forces) has been exquisitely tailored for what we call life. This means time and space are not actually objects as such but merely instruments that enable us to understand our environment. Lanza compares time and space as aspects to physical existence we tote around individually, much as turtles with their shells. And when our own shell sheds from each of us (as in death), the “you” still exists in the pervasive realm of consciousness.
In simplest terms, it means consciousness is not bound by the constraints of time and space. And that would mean our conscious self does not evaporate at death but carries on into the vast field of consciousness.
I (never acclaimed by the New York Times for anything) actually developed my own similar theory years back after observing that life to me felt like each of us are like individual waves appearing briefly atop a vast ocean of consciousness before naturally melding back into its depths. As longtime readers well know, I’ve enjoyed studying metaphysical information whenever new theories of life arise. To me such relevant studies provide a point of scientific inquiry where quantum physics and theology merge.
Lanza has come to believe an abundance of multiple universes can exist simultaneously and one’s consciousness on this frequency plane can flow into others when the bodily receiver invariably succumbs. We’ve been led (and conditioned) to misperceive our physical existence, Lanza says; the “we” that’s you and I is nothing more than material bodies that somehow generate a temporary,yet inexplicable, conscious state we know as our life.
That perspective naturally would dictate that consciousness perishes with the body. However, Lanza’s research leads him to believe the physical body in actuality is a receiver of consciousness, much like a TV cable box or a radio that receives signals through air. When the body fails, the consciousness we know as us is able to transcend time and space, which means our awareness then can be located anywhere. This concept fits with what quantum physics has proven: that the phenomenon of nonlocality and intuitive (aka spooky) communication at a distance exists between people and even their pets.
Lanza’s biocentrism also could explain near-death and out-of-body experiences as well as other inexplicable events in human existence. He’s not alone.
For instance, I read in Psychology Today that Dr. Stuart Hameroff, an American working with British physicist Roger Penrose during the mid-1990s (at first independently then collaboratively) developed a similar quantum theory of consciousness. Their mutual belief today contends our souls and conscious states are contained within microtubules which live within the brain’s cells containing 100 billion neurons in a field of continual electric firings and synaptic links. Their research convinces them that the experience of consciousness in our bodies is the result of quantum gravity effects inside these microtubules-a process they’ve labeled “orchestrated objective reduction” (Orch-OR).
Hameroff recently explained their microtubule theory at length in the popular Science Channel documentary Through the Wormhole. This would explain how, in a near-death experience, the microtubules would lose their quantum state, although the information they contain flows to the universe, before returning to the brain, very much in concert with Lanza’s biocentric theory.
The professor said quantum information within these microtubules cannot be destroyed. Rather, our consciousness distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a critical patient is revived, the quantum information can return to the brain’s microtubules and the patient talks of having a near-death experience. Hameroff added that, should a patient die, the quantum information exists outside of the body “perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
We know, valued readers, that such relevant research truly is pushing the envelope when widely respected scientists now incorporate words like “soul” in their findings. Should your own conscious state seek to know more of what they’ve discovered, simply search out these groundbreaking researchers on the Internet.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 23 on 01/18/2014