Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

by Robert Lanza

  All of the above are now finished, for keeps.

  In addition to the above, three separate major areas of quantum theory make sense biocentrically but are bewildering otherwise. We’ll discuss much of this at greater length in a moment, but let’s begin simply by listing them. The first is the entanglement just cited, which is a connectedness between two objects so intimate that they behave as one, instantaneously and forever, even if they are separated by the width of galaxies. Its spookiness becomes clearer in the classical two-slit experiment.

  The second is complementarity. This means that small objects can display themselves in one way or another but not both, depending on what the observer does; indeed, the object doesn’t have an existence in a specific location and with a particular motion. Only the observer’s knowledge and actions cause it to come into existence in some place or with some particular animation. Many pairs of such complementary attributes exist. An object can be a wave or a particle but not both, it can inhabit a specific position or display motion but not both, and so on. Its reality depends solely on the observer and his experiment.

  The third quantum theory attribute that supports biocentrism is wave-function collapse, that is, the idea that a physical particle or bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wave-function collapses at the time of observation, and only then actually assumes a definite existence. This is the standard understanding of what goes on in quantum theory experiments according to the Copenhagen interpretation, although competing ideas still exist, as we’ll see shortly.

  The experiments of Heisenberg, Bell, Gisin, and Wineland, fortunately, call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the here and now. Before matter can peep forth—as a pebble, a snowflake, or even a subatomic particle—it has to be observed by a living creature.

  This “act of observation” becomes vivid in the famous two-hole experiment, which in turn goes straight to the core of quantum physics. It’s been performed so many times, with so many variations, it’s conclusively proven that if one watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle, and creates solid-looking bam-bam-bam hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that retain the right to exhibit all possibilities, including somehow passing through both holes at the same time (even though it cannot split itself up)—and then creating the kind of rippling pattern that only waves produce.

  Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave-particle duality has befuddled scientists for decades. Some of the greatest physicists have described it as impossible to intuit, impossible to formulate into words, impossible to visualize, and as invalidating common sense and ordinary perception. Science has essentially conceded that quantum physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics. How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualization, and language?

  Amazingly, if we accept a life-created reality at face value, it all becomes simple and straightforward to understand. The key question is “waves of what?” Back in 1926, German physicist Max Born demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves of material, as his colleague Schrödinger had theorized. They are statistical predictions. Thus, a wave of probability is nothing but a likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there! It’s intangible. As Nobel physicist John Wheeler once said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”

  Note that we are talking about discrete objects like photons or electrons, rather than collections of myriad objects, such as, say, a train. Obviously, we can get a schedule and arrive to pick up a friend at a station and be fairly confident that his train actually existed during our absence, even if we did not personally observe it. (One reason for this is that as the considered object gets bigger, its wavelength gets smaller. Once we get into the macroscopic realm, the waves are too close together to be noticed or measured. They are still there, however.)

  With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—either duration or a position in space. Until the mind sets the scaffolding of an object in place, until it actually lays down the threads (somewhere in the haze of probabilities that represent the object’s range of possible values), it cannot be thought of as being either here or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy. When a scientist observes a particle, it will be found within the statistical probability for that event to occur. That’s what the wave defines. A wave of probability isn’t an event or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually observed.

  In our double-slit experiment, it is easy to insist that each photon or electron—because both these objects are indivisible—must go through one slit or the other and ask, which way does a particular photon really go? Many brilliant physicists have devised experiments that proposed to measure the “which-way” information of a particle’s path on its route to contributing to an interference pattern. They all arrived at the astonishing conclusion, however, that it is not possible to observe both which-way information and the interference pattern. One can set up a measurement to watch which slit a photon goes through, and find that the photon goes through one slit and not the other. However, once this is kind of measurement is set up, the photons instead strike the screen in one spot, and totally lack the ripple-interference design; in short, they will demonstrate themselves to be particles, not waves. The entire double-slit experiment and all its true amazing weirdness will be laid out with illustrations in the next chapter.

  Apparently, watching it go through the barrier makes the wave-function collapse then and there, and the particle loses its freedom to probabilistically take both choices available to it instead of having to choose one or the other.

  And it still gets screwier. Once we accept that it is not possible to gain both the which-way information and the interference pattern, we might take it even further. Let’s say we now work with sets of photons that are entangled. They can travel far from each other, but their behavior will never lose their correlation.

  So now we let the two photons, call them y and z, go off in two different directions, and we’ll set up the double-slit experiment again. We already know that photon y will mysteriously pass through both slits and create an interference pattern if we measure nothing about it before it reaches the detection screen. Except, in our new setup, we’ve created an apparatus that lets us measure the which-way path of its twin, photon z, miles away. Bingo: As soon as we activate this apparatus for measuring its twin, photon y instantly “knows” that we can deduce its own path (because it will always do the opposite or complementary thing as its twin). Photon y suddenly stops showing an interference pattern the instant we turn on the measuring apparatus for far-away photon z, even though we didn’t bother y in the least. And this would be true—instantly, in real time—even if y and z lay on opposite sides of the galaxy.

  And, though it doesn’t seem possible, it gets spookier still. If we now let photon y hit the slits and the measuring screen first, and a split second later measure its twin far away, we should have fooled the quantum laws. The first photon already ran its course before we troubled its distant twin. We should therefore be able to learn both photons’ polarization and been treated to an interference pattern. Right? Wrong. When this experiment is performed, we get a non-interference pattern. The y-photon stops taking paths through both slits retroactively; the interference is gone. Apparently, photon y somehow knew that we would eventually find out its polarization, even though its twin had not yet encountered our polarization-detection apparatus.

  What gives? What does this say about time, about any real existence of sequence, about present and future? What does it
say about space and separation? What must we conclude about our own roles and how our knowledge influences actual events miles away, without any passage of time? How can these bits of light know what will happen in their future? How can they communicate instantaneously, faster than light? Obviously, the twins are connected in a special way that doesn’t break no matter how far apart they are, and in a way that is independent of time, space, or even causality. And, more to our point, what does this say about observation and the “field of mind” in which all these experiments occur?

  Meaning . . . ?

  The Copenhagen interpretation, born in the 1920s in the feverish minds of Heisenberg and Bohr, bravely set out to explain the bizarre results of the quantum theory experiments, sort of. But, for most, it was too unsettling a shift in worldview to accept in full. In a nutshell, the Copenhagen interpretation was the first to claim what John Bell and others substantiated some forty years later: that before a measurement is made, a subatomic particle doesn’t really exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular. This blurry indeterminate existence ends only when its wave-function collapses. It took only a few years before Copenhagen adherents were realizing that nothing is real unless it’s perceived. Copenhagen makes perfect sense if biocentrism is reality; otherwise, it’s a total enigma.

  If we want some sort of alternative to the idea of an object’s wave-function collapsing just because someone looked at it, and avoid that kind of spooky action at a distance, we might jump aboard Copenhagen’s competitor, the “Many Worlds Interpretation” (MWI), which says that everything that can happen, does happen. The universe continually branches out like budding yeast into an infinitude of universes that contain every possibility, no matter how remote. You now occupy one of the universes. But there are innumerable other universes in which another “you,” who once studied photography instead of accounting, did indeed move to Paris and marry that girl you once met while hitchhiking. According to this view, embraced by such modern theorists as Stephen Hawking, our universe has no superpositions or contradictions at all, no spooky action, and no non-locality: seemingly contradictory quantum phenomena, along with all the personal choices you think you didn’t make, exist today in countless parallel universes.

  Which is true? All the entangled experiments of the past decades point increasingly toward confirming Copenhagen more than anything else. And this, as we’ve said, strongly supports biocentrism.

  Some physicists, like Einstein, have suggested that “hidden variables” (that is, things not yet discovered or understood) might ultimately explain the strange counterlogical quantum behavior. Maybe the experimental apparatus itself contaminates the behavior of the objects being observed, in ways no one has yet conceived. Obviously, there’s no possible rebuttal to a suggestion that an unknown variable is producing some result because the phrase itself is as unhelpful as a politician’s election promise.

  At present, the implications of these experiments are conveniently downplayed in the public mind because, until recently, quantum behavior was limited to the microscopic world. However, this has no basis in reason, and more importantly, it is starting to be challenged in laboratories around the world. New experiments carried out with huge molecules called buckyballs show that quantum reality extends into the macroscopic world we live in. In 2005, KHCO3 crystals exhibited quantum entanglement ridges one-half inch high—visible signs of behavior nudging into everyday levels of discernment. In fact, an exciting new experiment has just been proposed (so-called scaled-up superposition) that would furnish the most powerful evidence to date that the biocentric view of the world is correct at the level of living organisms.

  To which we would say—of course.

  And so we add a third principle of Biocentrism:

  First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.

  Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be separated.

  Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

  8

  THE MOST AMAZING EXPERIMENT

  Quantum theory has unfortunately become a catch-all phrase for trying to prove various kinds of New Age nonsense. It’s unlikely that the authors of the many books making wacky claims of time travel or mind control, and who use quantum theory as “proof ” have the slightest knowledge of physics or could explain even the rudiments of quantum theory. The popular 2004 film, What the Bleep Do We Know? is a good case in point. The movie starts out claiming quantum theory has revolutionized our thinking—which is true enough—but then, without explanation or elaboration, goes on to say that it proves people can travel into the past or “choose which reality you want.”

  Quantum theory says no such thing. Quantum theory deals with probabilities, and the likely places particles may appear, and likely actions they will take. And while, as we shall see, bits of light and matter do indeed change behavior depending on whether they are being observed, and measured particles do indeed amazingly appear to influence the past behavior of other particles, this does not in any way mean that humans can travel into their past or influence their own history.

  Given the widespread generic use of the term quantum theory, plus the paradigm-changing tenets of biocentrism, using quantum theory as evidence might raise eyebrows among the skeptical. For this reason, it’s important that readers have some genuine understanding of quantum theory’s actual experiments—and can grasp the real results rather than the preposterous claims so often associated with it. For those with a little patience, this chapter can provide a life-altering understanding of the latest version of one of the most famous and amazing experiments in the history of physics.

  The astonishing “double-slit” experiment, which has changed our view of the universe—and serves to support biocentrism—has been performed repeatedly for many decades. This specific version summarizes an experiment published in Physical Review A (65, 033818) in 2002. But it’s really merely another variation, a tweak to a demonstration that has been performed again and again for three-quarters of a century.

  It all really started early in the twentieth century when physicists were still struggling with a very old question—whether light is made of particles called photons or whether instead they are waves of energy. Isaac Newton believed it was made of particles. But by the late nineteenth century, waves seemed more reasonable. In those early days, some physicists presciently and correctly thought that even solid objects might have a wave nature as well.

  To find out, we use a source of either light or particles. In the classic double-slit experiment, the particles are usually electrons, because they are small, fundamental (they can’t be divided into anything else), and easy to beam at a distant target. A classic television set, for example, directs electrons at the screen.

  We start by aiming light at a detector wall. First, however, the light must pass through an initial barrier with two holes. We can shoot a flood of light or just a single indivisible photon at a time—the results remain the same. Each bit of light has a 50-50 chance of going through the right or the left slit.

  After a while, all these photon-bullets will logically create a pattern—falling preferentially in the middle of the detector with fewer on the fringes, because most paths from the light source go more or less straight ahead. The laws of probability say that we should see a cluster of hits like this:

  When plotted on a graph (in which the number of hits is vertical, and their position on the detector screen is horizontal) the expected result for a barrage of particles is indeed to have more hits in the middle and fewer near the edges, which produces a curve like thi
s:

  But that’s not the result we actually get. When experiments like this are performed—and they have been done thousands of times during the past century—we find that the bits of light instead create a curious pattern:

  Plotted on a graph, the pattern’s “hits” look like this:

  In theory, those smaller side peaks around the main one should be symmetrical. In practice, we’re dealing with probabilities and individual bits of light, so the result usually deviates a bit from the ideal. Anyway, the big question here is: why this pattern?

  Turns out, it’s exactly what we’d expect if light is made of waves, not particles. Waves collide and interfere with each other, causing ripples. If you toss two pebbles into a pond at the same time, the waves produced by each meet each other and produce places of higher-than-normal or lower-than-normal water-rises. Some waves reinforce each other or, if one’s crest meets another’s trough, they cancel out at that spot.

  So this early-twentieth-century result of an interference pattern, which can only be caused by waves, showed physicists that light is a wave or at least acts that way when this experiment is performed. The fascinating thing is that when solid physical bodies like electrons were used, they got exactly the same result. Solid particles have a wave nature too! So, right from the get-go, the double-slit experiment yielded amazing information about the nature of reality. Solid objects have a wave nature!

  Unfortunately, or fortunately, this was just the appetizer. Few realized that true strangeness was only beginning.

  The first oddity happens when just one just photon or electron is allowed to fly through the apparatus at a time. After enough have gone through and been individually detected, this same interference pattern emerges. But how can this be? With what is each of those electrons or photons interfering? How can we get an interference pattern when there’s only indivisible object in there at a time?