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Robert Lanza, M.D.

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Why Does Life Exist?

Posted: 03/02/11 05:10 PM ET

For over 10,000 years we've looked to the sky and gods for answers. We've sent spacecraft to Mars and beyond, and continue to build even bigger machines to find the "God" particle. We're like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," who went on a long journey in search of the Wizard to get back home, only to find the answer was inside her all along.

In "2001: A Space Odyssey" astronauts are sent on a quest to Jupiter. At the end, David Bowman finds himself pulled into a tunnel of colored light -− beyond space and time -− to learn the secrets (but merely finds another riddle). Loren Eiseley, the great anthropologist, summed it up best:

If the day comes when the slime of the laboratory for the first time crawls under man's direction, we shall have great need of humbleness. It will be difficult for us to believe, in our pride of achievement, that the secret of life has slipped through our fingers and eludes us still. We will list all the chemicals and the reactions. The men who have become gods will pose austerely before the popping flashbulbs of news photographs, and there will be few to consider -- so deep is the mind-set of an age -- whether the desire to link life to matter may not have blinded us to the more remarkable characteristics of both.

Steven Weinberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, concedes in his book "Dreams of a Final Theory" that there's a problem with consciousness, and despite the power of physical theory, the existence of consciousness doesn't seem derivable from physical laws.

When asked if he believed in God, even Einstein replied "There must be something behind the energy." According to biocentrism, that something is the human (or animal) mind. It's you, the observer, who collapses reality. Consciousness is one side of the equation, and matter and energy the other. In these days of experiment and disconnected theory, one point seems certain: the nature of the universe can't be divorced from the nature of life itself. If they're split, the reality is gone.

"It will remain remarkable," said Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, "in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality."

Here is the universe: our sense organs perceive atoms and galaxies to some 14 billion light-years, although we can't see with the eye of reason that the world is for us animals merely a bundle of sensations unified by laws that exist in our understanding. We can't see the laws upon which nature is built, from the intricate form of a seedpod to the periodicities of the planets and stars. We can't see the laws that uphold the world, or that if they be removed, then the trees and the mountains, indeed the whole universe, would collapse to nothing.

In this world, only an act of observation can confer shape and form to reality -− to a dandelion in a meadow, or a seed pod, or the sun or wind or rain. Anyway, it's impressive, and your cat or dog can do it, too. And even the spider, there on her web, moored outside my window.

The answer to life and the universe can't be found by looking through a microscope or inspecting spiral galaxies. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves. Our consciousness is why they exist. It unifies the thinking, extended worlds into a coherent experience and animates the music that creates our emotions and purposes -− the good and the bad, wars and love. It doesn't load the dice for you to play the game of life. True, there's pain and strife everywhere. But as Will Durant pointed out, we need to see "behind the strife, the friendly aid of neighbors, the rollicking joy of children and young men, the dances of vivacious girls, the willing sacrifices of parents and lovers, the patient bounty of the soil, and the renaissance of spring."

In whatever form it takes, life sings because it has a song. The meaning is in the lyrics.

"Biocentrism" (BenBella Books) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.

 
 
 

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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
marignymitch
E pluribus unum percent
08:30 PM on 03/05/2011
Why? As a patriotic 'Murkin I know I exist only to serve the corporate bottom line. How'm I doing?
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Elijah A Alexander Jr
Elijah NatureBoy
10:15 AM on 03/05/2011
Robert,
My experiences have taught me life is learning, not learning is death and death is not the same as discarnating, so in short, life exist to teach us what existence is through learning by living it.

The first step in learning is overcoming the duality of the earth's plane which require objectivity. The western concept of god established dos and don'ts for man only by "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" preventing objectivity and is where our dilemma is. However, reasoning with the tree's name proves it's an abstract as is god.

Isaiah 7:14-17 is the best example of objectivity. The child of the virgin forsakes god and devil in order to explore good and evil to make a choice. However, he found there's a time for indulgence and abstaining from all things and chose to live accordingly. It is from his experience that "grace" as "the right to indulge in good and evil to learn their purpose" came into being.

So Karma and reincarnation causes every life force to live every possible experience in existence from giving birth to it to experiencing every experience within it.
shylove2
warfare state is pathological
07:09 PM on 03/04/2011
Life is a holistic system and so is the universe interpenetrating series of systems in which the whole depends on the parts and the parts depend on the whole and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts... and nothing, not even nothing is left out and there is no outside at all. It is all interdependent.
03:21 PM on 03/03/2011
It's curious that we humans want someone or something outside of ourselves to provide a reason for existence.

Isn't enough that existence provides an opportunity for us to define our own purpose?

Perhaps the meaning of life and the reason for life is simply to alllow us to spin it (or collapse it) in any way we please. Perhaps it is simply potential. Perhaps it is all possibilities and all potentialities at once and our task, and our priviledge, is to choose which one to recognize.
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DAE
01:11 PM on 03/03/2011
If you follow this logic to its conclusion then the universe does not exist before an individual gains consciousness and after they die and lose it. And where does consciousness come from? If you posit a universal consciousness is it in the realm of science to describe and test what that is and how it came to be? If so then it is a natural phenomenon along the lines of dark matter and dark energy (we know it exists in the material world but don't quite know what it is). If not then it is supernatural and ultimately beyond our ken so just accept it and go with the flow. In point of fact our sensory apparati (and their instrumental enhancements) can only perceive a fraction of what may actually exist. If knowledge (all there is to know and perceive) is infinite then we will never know more than we know now or have known in the past. The universe will continue to unfold in ways that we cannot now fathom. Thus there will never be a theory of everything since we will never now everything there is to know. So all I have to say is, don't worry, be happy.
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
02:10 PM on 03/03/2011
Sums it up nicely, DAE. Sometimes I think 'natural' and 'supernatural' aren't good descriptions in this territory. I believe in the Creator Source (as distinct from the ideas that come up when the word 'God' is used) and other things that would be called supernatural - but I don't think they are outside nature at all. Testable? Probably not, but I see nature as encompassing a lot more than the can-we-test-it-in-a-lab-or-not division suggests.
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Alicia Westberry
college student & blogger
01:52 PM on 03/05/2011
After reading this blog, I was trying to formulate a response. I think you, frenchqueen, & DAE have done it for me. I couldn't have summed up my thoughts any better than those 2 responses. Thank you both for that.
04:03 PM on 03/03/2011
I agree. What makes us think we even have the capacity to understand if it was told to us? Life exists because matter and energy exist. Why do matter and energy exist? Heck if I know!. Life just is. Why do we need to justify it?
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Wes Isley
Writer and interfaith minister
12:03 PM on 03/04/2011
"Life just is. Why do we need to justify it?"--I agree!
01:00 PM on 03/03/2011
That source of life can be found by in looking within our selves, within the heart.

"Even gurus and prophets are now beginning to realize that salvation is not achieved through the
acquisition of phenomenal powers, but only in being humble to the Lord, seated in the heart."
"Children do not run after God. The children of today often do not go to churches. Why? According to Maitreya, there is an awareness in them that ‘The Lord is within’. Maitreya says, “God is not in the sky. God is in the heart.”"
“The language of the heart is where the Lord lives.”
"The day the Self within is free of the stresses and strains inherent in the processes of being and becoming, yet fulfils Its duty in a detached manner,the Kingdom of the Lord is experienced by the Self in the heart."
"The heart is never tarnished or touched, it is the seat of the soul. It is the mind that leads us astray."
- World Teacher Maitreya through an associate as reported in Share International
04:04 PM on 03/03/2011
Wait, what is the heart? By heart do they mean brain?
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Bluebloodsbastardson
07:59 PM on 03/04/2011
yes, the heart of man is in his thinking....and when the meditations of your heart are God-wise, the words of your lips shall be likewise. Man can do nothing having not first thought it.
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Mark Olmsted
essayist, blogger, activist
12:06 PM on 03/03/2011
The more I read and learn, the more I take refuge in doubt. If nothing is sure to be "true" (the very notion being a human construct), than everything can be "true."
I find when I live in the question mark, articles such as these hold tremendous interest. It is not the conclusions you reach, but the marvelousness of a human mind that can ask why and how without resorting to superstition and mythology, judgment and moral certainty.
What I liked about Albert Einstein is that is theoretical output never distracted him from the bigger questions: How do we love? How do we practice kindness? How do we find meaning in our time on earth?
11:43 AM on 03/03/2011
A big thank you! to Robert Lanza for the courage to stand behind his convictions. I, like him, am fully convinced that without taking consciousness fully into account and ascribing to it an ultimate reality we will never have a comprehensive understanding of the cosmos from which we have arisen and in which we have our physical being. As he points out in his book Biocentrism, consciousness and the observable world are correlative aspects of one undivided reality. As we leave traditional religious notions behind it is to metanarratives like this that we need to turn our attention and fully discover our place in the cosmos as it has been revealed to us by modern science.
10:10 AM on 03/03/2011
consciousness is a result of the brain , therefore there is no other side of the equation ,and Einstein was not a theist . he believed in Spinoza's god which is a NATURAL god not supernatural .
11:11 AM on 03/03/2011
So a lump of brain matter was able to construct the Empire State Building? You realize of course that if you're right (that conciousness is only the random effusion of the brain) then you cannot take credit for anything that you have done in your life. It was all the pre-determined accidental effusion of brain chemistry. You should take your diplomas and awards off of your office wall because you aren't responsible for them.
04:15 PM on 03/03/2011
Of course a lump of brain matter did not construct the Empire State Building. A lump of brain matter itself can't do a whole lot now can it?

But when it is part of a persons brain, the millions of signals transmitted amongst the other brain cells every second enable that person, with the help of hundreds of other people and their brains, to make the calculations necessary to design a building that will not tumble and to carry out the physical tasks needed to complete the job.

People get degrees to prove that they have learned and understand the math and physics needed to make these buildings so that they stand. Otherwise building would collapse all the time and kill people.
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
02:12 PM on 03/03/2011
And what if nature's a lot bigger than anything reducible to earthly material matter?
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OSullivan
09:28 PM on 03/04/2011
The possibility that this is true does not make it true.
09:25 PM on 03/02/2011
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
-- Albert Einstein,
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
07:17 PM on 03/03/2011
Fine if you insist on framing "god" to mean the Abrahamic god. But one doesn't have to do that or be dependent on any religion's ideas.
09:23 PM on 03/02/2011
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg,
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
02:12 PM on 03/03/2011
This isn't about religion.
04:20 PM on 03/03/2011
Good and evil are relative terms. Everything really shouldn't be lumped into one or the other because there is so much grey area in between which is subjective to the person doing the judging. I wish people didn't feel the need to oversimplify things because so much information is lost that way.
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DAE
06:07 PM on 03/02/2011
Knowledge is infinite.
11:12 AM on 03/03/2011
Then who am I?
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
02:13 PM on 03/03/2011
'Knowledge' does not have to mean 'human knowledge right here and now', I would have thought. Indeed it can't, if one means knowledge as in 'things to be known/learned' which is how I tend to think of it.
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whirlpool
founder walnut tree congregation
05:37 PM on 03/02/2011
Well for once your post makes some sense. I have to give that to you. However nature is not contingent on our consciousness.
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french queen13
my beloved is mine and I am his
02:15 PM on 03/03/2011
Certainly not 'our' as in humans.
12:12 AM on 03/07/2011
Actually, it is, nature being contingent on our consciousness.
And we, for our existence in natures reality, are dependent on
its consciousness.