BIOCENTRISM

by Robert Lanza

  s p a C e o U T

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  First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a

  process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it

  existed, would—by definition—have to exist in space. But this is

  meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but

  rather tools of the human and animal mind.

  Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal per-

  ceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the

  same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

  Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic par-

  ticles—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.

  Fourth Principle of Biocentrism: Without consciousness, “mat-

  ter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe

  that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability

  state.

  Fifth Principle of Biocentrism: The structure of the universe

  is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned

  for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not

  the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatio-

  temporal logic of the self.

  Sixth Principle of Biocentrism: Time does not have a real exis-

  tence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which

  we perceive changes in the universe.

  Seventh Principle of Biocentrism: Space, like time, is not an

  object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal under-

  standing and does not have an independent reality. We carry

  space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus,

  there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events

  occur independent of life.

  the mAn BehInd

  12

  the curtAIn

  Soon after finishing high school, I made another journey into

  Boston. I had been searching for a summer job. I had put in

  applications at McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, even at Corc-

  oran’s, the shoe factory downtown. But all the jobs were tied up.

  I had some thought of trying to find one at the Harvard Medical

  School again. But even while I turned this thought over in my mind,

  I got off the train at Harvard Square.

  I do not know how I got the idea. When I think it over now, it

  occurs to me that I ought to have wondered at doing it, but at the

  same time it all seemed quite natural. I had wanted to meet a Nobel

  Laureate for some time. I wondered what it would be like. I would

  have to introduce myself. “Excuse me, Professor Einstein, my name

  is Robert Lanza.” And I tried to fancy what James Watson looked

  like, for it flashed across my mind that he was on the faculty at Har-

  vard. He had discovered the structure of DNA along with Francis

  Crick, and was one of the greatest men in the history of science.

  I decided on going to his laboratory at once, but, alas, when I got

  there, I found that he had recently taken up the directorship at the

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  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. When I found out I

  could not possibly meet him, I sat down, at a loss. Now what?

  “Come, there’s no use being sad!” I said to myself. “I’m in Boston

  after all.”

  And I began thinking of all the Nobel Laureates of which I

  knew. “I’m sure Ivan Pavlov, Frederick Banting, and Sir Alexander

  Fleming are not at Harvard, for they’re all dead. And I’m sure Hans

  Krebs is not, for he’s at Oxford University, and George Wald—yes,

  he’s here, I’m certain! He shared the Nobel Prize with Haldan Hart-

  line and Ragnar Granit for discoveries on the visual processes of

  the eye.”

  The corridor was dark and musty-smelling. I was just outside

  Dr. Wald’s laboratory when the door opened. A woman came out.

  “Excuse me, miss, do you know where I could find Dr. Wald?”

  “He’s home sick today,” she said. “But he should be in

  tomorrow.”

  “That will be too late,” I replied, still struggling with the realiza-

  tion that even a Nobel Laureate could get sick. “I’ll only be in Boston

  a few more hours.”

  “I’ll be speaking with him this afternoon. Can I give him a

  message?”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. I thanked the kind woman and left.

  It was time to go home. Back to Stoughton. Back to the world of

  McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. So I set out past Harvard Square,

  and very soon caught the train. “I wish there were more Nobel Prize

  winners here in Boston,” I thought, feeling more melancholy by the

  minute. And here I began to ponder anew, for Boston had many other

  colleges and universities. Quite a few were nationally known, and

  some were internationally famous. Perhaps the most important was

  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Institute had recently

  broadened the scope of its scholarly work beyond the limits of tech-

  nology. Besides technology and engineering, it had made notable

  contributions through research in the biological sciences.

  And so I got off the train at Kendall Square and made my way to

  the MIT campus. It had been so long since I had been there (back in

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  my early science fair days with Dr. Kuffler) that I felt lost at first, but

  I soon got my bearings.

  The first question of course was “Are there any Nobel Prize win-

  ners here?” Just up the street was a building of colossal dimensions,

  with a huge dome and columns. “MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF

  TECHNOLOGY” read the sign. Inside was an information booth.

  “Could you tell me, please,” I inquired, “are there any Nobel Lau-

  reates at MIT?”

  “Of course,” the man said. “There’s Salvador Luria and Gobind

  Khorana.”

  I had not the slightest idea who they were or what they did either,

  but I thought it would be grand to meet them anyhow.

  “Who’s the most famous?”

  The man said nothing. I dare say he thought it a strange ques-

  tion. “Dr. Luria,” said the gentleman who was sitting next to him.

  “He’s the Director of the Center for Cancer Research.”

  “Do you know where I could find him?”

  The man looked in his directory and wrote: “Luria, Salvador E.

  Building E17.”

  Holding this slip of paper as if it was some sort of official letter of

  introduction, I left, excited, and lost no time crossing the campus to

  his office. One of his secretaries sat at the front desk, sifting through

  some papers. I was scared, so deeply scared I had to look at the slip

  of paper again.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Could I please speak to Dr. Salvador?”

  “You mean Dr. Luria?”

  I managed a lopsided smile (as well as I could, for I felt very stu-

  pid). “Yes, of course!”

/>   “Do you have an appointment?”

  I tried not to act like I was out of place, although she obviously

  knew I just a young boy.

  “No, but I was hoping I could ask him a quick question.”

  “He’ll be in meetings all day.” Then with a wink, she added, “But

  you might try to catch him at lunchtime.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will stop back.”

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  There was no time to read all his scientific papers. But I found a

  library in a building not a few blocks from his office. I learned that

  he and Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey had just won the 1969

  Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning viruses and viral diseases

  that provided the foundation for molecular biology.

  I’ve often found time slows its passage markedly as I await lunch-

  time, but on this day clocks seemed gummed with epoxy. The hours

  passed with the speed of tectonic plates.

  “I’m back,” said I. “Is Dr. Luria in?”

  The secretary nodded. “Yes. He’s in his office. Just knock on the

  door.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked a little shyly.

  “Yes, go ahead. He doesn’t have much time.”

  As I knocked, my stomach did a slow rollover that made me feel

  so nervous that I was wracked with sudden second thoughts.

  “Come in.”

  I looked at him, thunderstruck. He was just sitting there, eat-

  ing his lunch—it appeared to be a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

  Was this, then, the cuisine of intellectual giants?

  “Who are you?” His voice seemed on the edge of being

  perturbed.

  I got a feeling exactly like the Cowardly Lion had when he

  approached the Wizard of Oz, with the clouds of fire swirling round.

  “My name is Robert Lanza.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You mean you just came in off the street?”

  This was not an encouraging start.

  I replied, “I—I am looking for a job, sir. I’ve done some work

  with Dr. Stephen Kuffler of the Harvard Medical School, and was

  wondering if you could use any help.” I thought I might as well men-

  tion Dr. Kuffler, as I did not quite know what else to say to him, and

  perhaps it might help. I was as yet too young to appreciate fully the

  power of name-dropping.

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  “Please sit down,” he said, his tone suddenly very courteous.

  “Stephen Kuffler? He’s a very good fellow.”

  His large eyes shone as we talked. I told him about the experi-

  ments I did in my basement, and how I had met Dr. Kuffler some

  years ago.

  “I don’t do much research anymore,” he said. “It’s mostly admin-

  istrative. But I’ll get you a job. I promise.”

  I thanked him, not quite fully able to believe that it had been

  this easy and this brief.

  “Look here,” he said. “I’m a fool to do it.” I didn’t yet realize that

  he was putting me, a kid off the street, ahead of a long list of quali-

  fied in-school applicants.

  As it was, all I could do was to apologize for inconveniencing

  him.

  When I returned to Stoughton, the sun was setting. Barbara, my

  next-door neighbor, was working in her garden. I went running up

  to her.

  “I got a job,” I said. “Guess where?”

  “You got the job at the cinema!” (For, you see, I had very much

  wanted to work there, and although I had put in an application, they

  never called me back.)

  “No! Guess again.”

  “Let me think—McDonald’s? Dunkin’ Donuts? I don’t know.”

  I told her of my day. When I was done, I was not surprised to

  see her clap her hands and exclaim, “Oh, Bobby, I’m so excited. Dr.

  Luria is one of my heroes. I heard him speak at a peace rally.”

  I went back to MIT the next day. As I passed one of the biology

  buildings, I heard my name and looked up. It was Dr. Luria. “Rob-

  ert! Hi!” I couldn’t believe he remembered my name. “Come along

  with me!”

  I followed him through the entrance, down a corridor, and into

  an office, in which was—I believe—the director of personnel. What

  Dr. Luria said next stunned me: “I want you to give him whatever

  job he wants.”

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  Then he turned to me and said, “You’re a pain in the ass. There

  are a hundred MIT students who want to work here.”

  But I got the job, and it changed my life. I worked in the lab-

  oratory of Dr. Richard Hynes, who was just an assistant professor

  at the time, with just one graduate student and a technician. Dr.

  Hynes later went on to succeed Dr. Luria as Director of the Center

  (MIT’s Center for Cancer Research) and to become a member of the

  prestigious National Academy of Sciences and one of the greatest sci-

  entists in the world. Dr. Hynes was studying a new high-molecular-

  weight protein, which would later be called “fibronectin.” During

  my work there, when I added fibronectin to transformed “cancer-

  like” cells, they reverted to a normal morphology. When I showed

  Dr. Luria the cells, he said it was the most exciting thing he had

  seen all week. The research I did there was eventually published in

  the journal Cell, which is among the most prestigious and well-cited scientific journals in the world.

  The odd, precarious days of my childhood’s escapes were reced-

  ing into a distant memory.

  wIndmIlls of

  13

  the mInd

  One does occasionally observe a tendency for the begin-

  ning zoological textbooks to take the unwary reader by a

  hop, skip, and jump from the little steaming pond or the

  beneficent chemical crucible of the sea, into the lower

  world of life with such sureness and rapidity that it is

  easy to assume that there is no mystery about this matter

  at all, or, if there is, that it is a very little one.

  —Loren Eiseley

  Cosmologists, biologists, and evolutionists do not seem at all

  flabbergasted when they state that the universe—indeed the

  laws of nature themselves—just appeared for no reason one

  day. It would be well perhaps to remember the experiments of Fran-

  cesco Redi, Lazzaro Spallanzani, and Louis Pasteur—basic biological

  experiments that put to rest the theory of spontaneous generation,

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  the belief that life had arisen—pop, shazam—from dead matter (as,

  for instance, maggots from rotting meat, frogs from mud, mice from

  bundles of old clothes)—and not make the same mistake for the ori-

  gin of the universe itself.

  But in addition to the bedrock illogic that seems to arise in clas-

  sical science when tackling the fundamental questions, an additional,

  even more basic, problem arises. It is the dualistic nature of language,

  the way we think, and the limits of logic. Just as we cannot properly

  perceive what’s going on in the universe without incorporating the

  essence of perc
eption itself, that is, consciousness, so too we cannot

  adequately discuss and understand the cosmos unless we have some notion of the nature and limitations of the tools used for discussion

  and understanding, namely language and the rational mind. After all,

  we are at this moment reading, and things will make sense or else

  fail to do so only within the matrix of the medium at hand. If the

  medium introduces a built-in bias, we should at least know about it.

  Few pause to consider the limits of logic and language as the

  tools we generally employ in our quest for knowledge. As quantum

  theory increasingly gains ascendancy in everyday technological

  applications, as when we create tunneling microscopes and quantum-

  based computers, those actively working to find applications for its

  marvelous facets often confront its illogical or non-rational nature

  but ignore it. After all, only the math and technological applications

  matter to them. They have a job to do; leave meaning to the science

  philosophers. Moreover, one needn’t understand something in order

  to enjoy its benefits, as men standing at the altar have realized since

  time immemorial.

  Still, the more one deals with quantum theory, the more amaz-

  ing (meaning counterlogical) it becomes—even beyond the experi-

  ments discussed in earlier chapters. To illustrate this, recall that in

  everyday life, choices are normally narrowed down to specific pos-

  sibilities. If you’re looking for your cat, it is either in the living room

  or not in the living room. Or, perhaps, partially in and partially out,

  if it is napping in the doorway. Those are the only three possibilities,

  and no one can conceive of any others.

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  But in the quantum world, when a particle or bit of light has

  traveled from point A to point B, and there are mirrors that allow

  bounces so that it can reach its destination by either of two routes,

  an amazing thing happens.

  Careful experiments involving blockable mirrors and such show

  that the particle has not taken path A, nor taken path B. It also has

  not somehow split itself up and taken both paths, nor has it gotten

  there by taking neither path. Because these are the only choices we

  can conceive, the electron has defied logic and done something else,

  something that we cannot imagine. Particles doing such seemingly