Recently, medical professor Robert Lanza claimed to have evidence that confirms a real existence beyond the grave, and that these proofs are found in quantum physics.
Lanza claims that the theory of biocentrism teaches that death as we know it is only an illusion created by our consciousness.
“We believe that life is just a carbon activity and a mixture of molecules – we live for a moment and then rot in the ground ,” the scientist said on his website.
Lanza of Wake Forest University, North Carolina Medical School, added that as humans, we believe in death because “we have learned that we are dying,” or more precisely, “our conscience Associates life with the body and we know that organisms die. “
His theory of biocentrism, however, explains that death can not be as definitive as we think .
Biocentrism is classified as the “theory of everything” and comes from the Greek for “center of life”.
It is the belief that life and biology are at the heart of reality and that life creates the universe, not the other way around.
Lanza uses as an example the way we perceive the world around us.
A person sees a blue sky, and is told that the color they see is blue, but the cells in a person’s brain could be altered to make the sky looked either green or red.
Our consciousness makes its sense of the world, and it can be modified to change this interpretation .
Looking at the universe from the point of view of a biocentric, it also means that space and time do not behave as rigidly and rapidly as our consciousness tells us they do.
In short, space and time are “simply tools of our mind”.
Once this theory of space and time as mental constructions is accepted, it means that death and the idea of immortality exist in a world without spatial or linear boundaries.
Many theoretical physicists (though not all) believe (think, suppose, theorize, …) that there are an infinite number of universes, with different variations of people, and situations (“lives”) simultaneously.
“We live in a world of accepted or unacceptable theories and mostly have a good percentage of positive” proofs “to support them … but the research and the difference found between what is learned in school in that year and the postulates 20 to 30 years later, shows us that much of the things learned each year in school … are improved, distorted, destroyed or invalidated in the following years … enough to question this false certainty Actually pseudo-scientific, it) which says that scientists simply explain things through experimentation, and without any “beliefs” … it’s much more complicated than that, Especially since the same scientists admit, for example, that they use infinite numbers in mathematics which are nevertheless affirmed to be “precise” and reliable … which is quite contradictory from the point of view of logic!
Lanza adds that whatever can possibly happen, occurs at some level through these multiverse and this means that death can not exist in “no real sense” whatsoever .
Lanza, instead, says that when we die, our life becomes a “perennial flower that comes back to bloom in the multiverse . “
“What you see can not be present without your conscience, ” Lanza explained . “Our consciousness gives meaning to the world “.
How does the double-slit experience support Lanza’s theory?
In the experiment repeated many times, when scientists observe a particle projected through a barrier with two slits, the particle behaves like a bullet and passes through one slot or the other.
Yet, if no one looks at the particle (only a measuring device without consciousness ), it acts like a wave .
This means that it can pass through both slots at the same time . This demonstrates that matter and energy can display wave and particle characteristics, and that the behavior of particle changes is based on the perception and consciousness of a person .
“Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear path of thought. When we die, we do not do it in a pool of random-matrix, but in an inescapable matrix of life . “
Lanza cites the famous experience of double slots to refer to his claims. His theory is very elaborate and supplied, to such an extent that he has tried to popularize it in a book called ” Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe .” ”
Buddhism and Quantum Physics: A Strange Parallelism Between Two Concepts of Reality
The concNagarjuna was the most important Buddhist philosopher in India. According to Etienne Lamotte it lived in the second part of the 3rd century. His philosophy is very topical. Until today she has determined the ways of thinking of all the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. We have little information on his private life, but many legends of which we will not go into details.
On the other hand, the authenticity of 13 of his works is assured in scientific research. It is especially the Danish Chr. Lindtner, who has been responsible for the verification and translation of these 13 works [1]. His main work, Stances of the Environment par excellence [Mulamadhyamaka-karika] [abbreviation: MMK] was recently published in a French translation by Guy Bugault [2]. Nagarjuna is the founder of the philosophical school of the middle way, Madhyamaka.
The middle path represents a philosophical and spiritual path which seeks to avoid extreme metaphysical concepts, especially the concepts of substantial and subjective thought. In his main work, Stances of the Environment par excellence [MMK] , the middle path is described as follows: “24,18 It is the dependent production [pratityasamutpada] that we mean under the name of non-substantiality [ sunyata]. This is a metaphorical designation, it is nothing but the middle way “[3]. Therefore according to Nagarjuna the dependence of things is identical with the non-substantiality of things.
Nagarjuna’s philosophy is based on two aspects.
On the one hand, an exposition of its own concept of reality [pratityasamutpada and sunyata], according to which the fundamental reality has no hard core and is not independent elements, but systems of two mutually interdependent parts. This concept is opposed to one of the key expressions of the traditional metaphysics of India: svabhava [to be clean].
On the other hand it consists of numerous indications to internal contradictions of four extreme concepts, which are not presented in all details but only in their principles.
It is easy to recognize, however, from what modes of thought these principles refer, and this is important, because it concerns our modes of thought which do not allow us to know reality as it is.
This theme is not only a discussion of the traditional metaphysics of India. These 4 extreme approaches, I refer to the substantial, subjective, holistic and instrumentalist modes of thought of the modern world. In order to circumvent and avoid these modes of thinking, we must first know them. That is why they are sketched here in a piecemeal way.
Substantialism
Substantial thought is in Europe at the center of traditional metaphysics, based on pre-Socratic philosophy, going through Plato to Kant. According to traditional metaphysics, substance or being is an unchangeable thing, identical with itself, not resulting from any element, existing by itself. The substance or the clean being is the raison d’etre of everything, the immaterial foundation of the world in which we live. Under the terms “supreme substance” traditional metaphysics often assimilated God or a divine being.
Since Kant the main currents of modern philosophy no longer regarded things as elements of philosophical reflection. The object of thought having become reason as the means of knowledge. This is why traditional metaphysics has lost some importance. But the central concepts such as being, substance, reality have been replaced by substantial and reductionist scientific expressions. Now it is scientific terms such as atoms, particles, energy, fields of force, laws of nature, symmetry that are the raison d’etre of things.
Subjectivism
“A philosophical tendency which consists in bringing every judgment of value or reality to individual acts or states of consciousness, and according to which all that exists has reality and / or value only in function of a thinking subject, Of a conscience which gives them to them. “
Through the expression of subjective thought I hear the turn to the subject that was introduced by René Descartes. It is the doctrine that consciousness is the primary datum, while every other thing is the content, form or creation of consciousness. The apogee of this subjectivism is Berkeley’s idealism. Kant’s philosophy can be considered a moderate subjectivism. The primacy of subjectivity or of self-consciousness has since become the pivot of modern philosophical thought, which makes it clear and certain (Gadamer).
The holism
This third approach seeks to avoid the stereotyped and schematic alternative of the first two approaches by merging the two aspects into one. Now it is no longer about parties, there is nothing but identity, everything is one. Holism is an absolute principle.
It is a mythification. The whole becomes a unit independent of its parts. The whole is understood as a concrete thing as if the whole was an empirical fact based on experience. This approach is linked to the history of philosophy in the names of different thinkers like Saint Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz and Schelling. In quantum physics it is represented above all by the physicist David Bohm.
instrumentalism
This fourth approach consists of a refutation of the existence of the subject and of the object. It does not take into account the subject and the object. Instead of preferring one or the other or both at the same time, instrumentalism refuses both. The question of reality is devoid of importance or even useless. The instrumentalism is modern, intelligent [for example in the person of the philosopher Enst Cassirer] and sometimes a little chicaner. It is difficult to escape from it. It consists in considering thought as an assimilation of information. It no longer deals with what phenomena information informs. It is a problem that comes to him from subjectivism, which the philosopher Donald Davidson used to say: When we decided on Descartes’ approach,
Instrumentalism is a collective notion, it indicates different scientific conceptions, which abstract human knowledge as a whole or scientific formations (conceptions, theses or theories) as a reproduction of the structure of reality but rather as a result Of human interaction with nature for the purpose of a theoretical and practical orientation.
Note FL: Where idealism was a thesis on the nature of reality, it is rather a thesis dealing with the meaning of theoretical statements. An instrumentalist may, for example, assert that the electron does not designate a real entity of reality, but rather that it is a concept to which certain manipulations in the laboratory can be matched and certain expectations concerning the results of these manipulations .
According to instrumentalism, theories are not a description of the world but rather effective instruments for calculation and prediction [5]. The instrumentalist approach is expressed in a few words only by the physicist Anton Zeilinger who says in an interview:
“In classical physics we speak of a world of things, which exist somewhere outside and describe this nature. In quantum physics we have learned that we must be very careful. Ultimately, physics is not the science of nature, but the science of statements about nature. Nature itself is always a mental construction. “
Niels Bohr once said this in the following way: There is no quantum world, there is only a quantum description [6].
Nagarjuna presents these 4 concepts of reality in a schema that is called in Sanskrit ‘catuskoti’ and in Greek ‘tetralemme’. It is a group of four propositions, the second of which is the contradictory of the first, the third being the addition of the two and the fourth the cancellation. In a few words the four main concepts of Nagarjuna can be formulated as follows:
Never, the nowhere, nothing that arises substantially, neither from oneself, nor from anything else, nor from both at the same time, nor without cause.
Behind this phrase there are concepts of reality that can be linked to 4 ways of thinking: substantial, subjective, holistic and instrumentalist ways. It will be difficult to find a modern man or woman who does not manifest in his own way one of his four extreme approaches. This explains the actuality of the philosophy of Nagarjuna.
Nagarjuna did not at all refute the substantial thought to arrive at the subjectivism, as it was reproached to him. He did not refuse the dualistic scheme to arrive at a holistic or total approach, as some benevolent interpreters have said of it. And he did not refute the holism to stop in the clouds of instrumentalism, as many interpreters succeeding Ludwig Wittgenstein affirm. And why not? It is precisely the 4 extreme approaches that are systematically refuted by Nagarjuna.
How does Nagarjuna justify his idea of mutual dependence? The starting point of the main work is the dual nature of things. These double things can not be divided into two independent parts. They are a system of two material or immaterial elements which complement each other. One element does not exist without the other, one is in correlation with the other. Nagarjuna takes care of these different double systems such as:
- One thing & its conditions
- A walker & his journey
- The seeing subject & the seen object
- The cause & effect
- Character & characteristic
- Concupiscence and concupiscent subject
- The idea of production & the causes of production
- The act & the agent
- The subject that sees & the vision
- Fire and fuel.
In this way, we are guided to the center of the philosophy of Nagarjuna. It lies in its concept of reality. In the first 10 chapters of his main work, but also in the chapters that follow, Nagarjuna emphasizes a single idea which is found in the following conclusion: the two elements of a system of two elements are not identical but they do not split two.
Note FL: This speech constantly refers to the notion of causality ( “cause and effect “) and implicitly up to a specific point of view, either downstream of the case, the side effect. All our actions are the fruit of something that preceded them and it is not possible to escape this implacable mechanism. The knowledge of causes thus makes it possible to predict the effects, the future is the consequence of the present which is the consequence of the past. In other words, the future is already written, and the present is impotent.My vision is the exact opposite of this approach, that is, upstream of the process. Thus Nagarjuna’s words are not necessarily “true”, but rather “useful” insofar as they guide humanity towards a future that is not yet known, and which is written in the present. The future is to be created.
How could he have a concupiscent subject without concupiscence? When there are no causes of production then there is no production, by itself there is neither one nor the other. Without the act there is no agent, without fire there is no fuel. Fire and fuel do not form one but they do not fall into two independent objects. The material and mental elements of a system of two elements do not exist in isolation from themselves. They are not identical and they are not mutually independent.
In a pair of two correlative elements the constitution and even the entire existence of an element is dependent on the other. One happens with the other. When one disappears the other disappears with him. It is for this reason: Never, nowhere, nothing that arises substantially, neither from itself, nor from anything else, nor from both at the same time, nor without cause. The basic reality is not the formation of a hard core but dependent systems. This concept of reality is for the moment an idea , an indication to a reality which can not, in fact, be explained.
He who can speak of reality as it is, without concepts, does not know it. The yogin experience of non-substantiality, the experience of sunyata and pratityasamutpada, the lived experience of reality as it is, presupposes for the Buddhist tradition that refers to Nagarjuna, a high spiritual realization. It demands to abandon the extreme positions, and even the dissolution of all dualist thought. To experience sunyata, to experience the non-substantiality of things means to free oneself from all the entanglements of this world. Another word to describe this is: nirvana. The interpretations.
According to Nagarjuna, the first question to be asked is that of reality and not at all that of consciousness, spirit or knowledge. This subjectivism is rather valid for the philosophical school of Yogacara or for Tantric Buddhism. But the interpretations of the most important works of Yogacara are controversial because they can be understood in an ontological sense that denies the external world and which adopts the position of idealism or in a sense an epistemological or a sense of a The theory of knowledge which does not explain the external world but rather the way in which perception is a projection of consciousness.
To show that it is the objects that are substanceless and mutually dependent and not just their design, I rely on quantum physics. In physics it is not only about concepts but also about the constitution of physical reality. It only produces models directly. It therefore does not examine only the realities it produces itself, but we must in no way go so far to consider all our perceptions and all our models of thinking as completely arbitrary.
The constructions of our mind are not directly identical with reality but they are not at all accidental and contingent and as a rule they are not misleading [Irvin Rock]. Behind these models are the empirical objects and approximately there is a structural resemblance of a realistic physical model with the corresponding object.
The metaphysical foundations of quantum physics
Prerequisite:
It is not an exposition or a critique of quantum physics, but rather a discussion of metaphysical turns of mind, which are the basis of quantum physics. The concept of reality in quantum physics can be explained by three key concepts: complementarity, 4 interactions and the phenomenon of entanglement.
The phenomenon of entanglement is not explained here. I only mention Roger Penrose’s comment. He says: “The phenomenon of entanglement is a very strange thing. It is an intermediate thing between objects to be separated and to be together “. Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press 1999, p. 66].
Quantum physics has a long history in which there has been no definitive proof that the smallest elements of light and matter have a corpuscle or wave character. Numerous experiments supported both hypotheses. The electrons and the photons behave sometimes like waves and sometimes like corpuscles. This was called the wave-corpuscle dualism. The conception of dualism was understood as a dichotomy and a logical contradiction.
According to the conception of dualism the electrons and the photons can not be corpuscles and also waves. These are expectations and expectations that we have linked to atomism, for in the sense of atomism a scientific explanation consists in reducing a changeable thing to its constant elements or to mathematical laws. It is from the basic dualist conception that modern atomism has inherited the science of the nature of the Greeks: there is no substance and permanence in the objects of perception of the world in which we live, but only In the elements of things and in the mathematical order.
These material and immaterial foundations hold the world together. They do not change while everything is unstable and changeable. According to the expectations of atomism it must be possible to reduce an object to its independent elements or to its mathematical laws or simple basic principles, according to which the fundamental systems must be corpuscles or waves, but not both at the same time.
What do we mean by independent elements?
Plato had made the difference between two forms of being. He distinguished the particular things which are all that they are by participation and which for that do not have a proper being and, on the other hand, the ideas which have a proper being. Traditional metaphysics has adopted this division into two parts made by Plato. In traditional metaphysics a proper and independent being is an entity which is not dependent on anything else [Descartes], which exists of itself and of itself [More], which is completely unlimited by others and Free from any external influence [Spinoza], which consists for oneself without the others [Schelling].
Albert Einstein followed this metaphysical tradition when he wrote: “For the classification of things which are introduced into physics it is essential that these things require a mutually independent existence as much as things are at a precise time to be situated in different parts of the universe, space’. Without the assumption of such independence from the existence of distant things which are mutually at a distance, physical Would not be possible in a common sense, even if the origin of this supposition springs from everyday thought “[9].
This idea of an independent reality was projected by atomism on the fundamental elements of matter. A scientific explanation is based on the reduction of instability and the multiplicity of objects and states to their permanent, stable, independent and indivisible elements. According to the expectations of atomists, all changes in nature are explained by the separation, union and movement of atoms or even more fundamental elements that are unchanged and independent.
These fundamental elements or their mathematical laws constitute the core of things, they are the foundation of everything and they hold the world together. Whether the fundamental elements of matter were corpuscles or waves was an explosive theme. The traditional conceptions of reality that metaphysics had put at the disposal of quantum physics were at stake. It was possible that the fundamental reality could not be grasped with the traditional conceptions of reality.
What is the explanatory value of atomism if it proves that there are no independent quantum atoms or objects and that quantum objects have no stable nucleus? Are the objects objective and subjective, both at the same time, neither one nor the other? What is reality? Is the quantum world different from the world we live in?
http://www.automatesintelligents.com/echanges/2007/aout/kohl.pdf
Niels Bohr.
Beginning in 1927, the physicist Niels Bohr introduced the notion of complementarity, according to which the corpuscle and wave images do not represent two irreducible, opposed and separate images but complement each other and give a complete description of the common physical phenomena. The complementarity meant for Niels Bohr that it was not possible in the quantum world to talk about independent and objective quantum objects because they are in mutual correlation and with the measuring instrument.
Bohr stressed that this correlation between the quantum object and the measuring instrument was an inseparable element of quantum objects because it played an important role in the manifestation of certain important qualities of quantum objects: some measurements fix quantum objects as quantum objects That corpuscles. They determine the state or manifestation of objects and destroy the interference [in this case we speak of decoherence] that characterizes objects as dimples.
Other measuring methods determine them as long as they exist. This is in a few words the new physical conception of the reality of Niels Bohr. From the discovery of the non-separability of the quantum object and the instrument of measurement Niels Bohr did not draw the instrumentalist consequence that there are no quantum objects, at least that he said In his physical argumentation. When he spoke at the metaphysical level of quantum physics he adopted an instrumentalist approach [10]. From a physical point of view, the fundamental physical reality was for him an interaction of the correlated objects.
The Interaction in the Standard Model of Orthodox Quantum Physics
Meanwhile the notion of interaction was introduced into the standard model of quantum physics. The 4 elementary interactions prevented things from being reduced to their basic elements as Democritus had thought. To the basic elements are added the 4 interactions, the forces which act between the elementary objects. As basic elements they have not established themselves as independent and isolated objects but as systems of two bodies or several bodies or sets of elementary particles. Between these elements act interactions. It is the forces that hold the elements together [11]. These forces are a component of the elements. They are often forces of attraction but sometimes also forces of repulsion, especially when it comes to electromagnetic forces.
One can imagine the interactions between the elementary particles as an exchange of elementary particles. Physicist Steven Weinberg wrote:
“Today we are approaching a homogeneous view of nature when we think in the notions of elementary particles and the interactions between them […]. The best known are gravitation and electromagnetism. They belong to the empirical world because of their great reach. Gravity keeps our feet on the ground and the planets in their orbit. The electromagnetic interaction between the electrons and the atomic nucleus is responsible for all the chemical and physical properties of ordinary solid bodies, liquids and gases.
The two core forces belong to another category in terms of scope and familiarity. The ‘strong’ interaction that maintains the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus has a range of ca 10 -13 centimeters only. This is why it is completely lost in everyday life and even in the domain of the atom [10 -8 centimeter]. The least familiar is the ‘weak’ interaction, which has such a short range (less than 10-15 centimeter) and is so weak that it can not possibly hold anything together at all. “[12]
This kind of explanation enters into difficult and subtle details. For example: how can an electron that is only one object interact with another quantum object? What part can it issue when it is one-sided? This question can be answered by the conception of interaction. An electron is not built by a single part, because the interaction of the electron itself is a part of the electron.
In an article on supergravity, published in 1978, physicists Daniel Z. Freedman and Pieter van Nieuwenhuizen wrote on this subject: “One can describe, for example, the mass of electron observed as the sum of a mass Nue ‘and’ self-energe ‘, which is based on the interaction of the electron with its own electromagnetic field. In a detached way none of these elements is visible “[13].
What quantum physics knows about the carriers of the interaction can be briefly rendered with the words of the physicist Gerhard ‘t Hooft. He writes that an electron is surrounded by a cloud of virtual parts that it emits and absorbs permanently. This cloud is not only formed of photons but also of charged particle pairs, such as electrons and their antiparticles, the positrons “[…]. “A quark is also surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles, namely gluons and quark-anti-quark pairs” [14]. Isolated and independent quarks have never been seen. This phenomenon is called ‘Confinement’ by recent scientific research, that is to say: quarks are prisoners, they can not appear alone, but only as a pair or trio.
When one seeks to separate two quarks by force, new quarks emerge between them which unite in pairs or trios. The physicist Claudio Rebbi and other scientists find that: “Between the quarks and gluons within an elementary particle there are permanently visible quarks and additional gluons which dissipate after a short time “[15]. These clouds of virtual particles represent the interaction or establish the interactions.
We have reached the center of quantum physics. It is born of a new physical conception of reality. This conception no longer regards isolated and independent elements as the foundations of reality, but systems of two bodies or two states of quantum objects, such as earth and moon, proton & electrons, proton & neutron, wave & measuring instruments, corpuscle & Measuring instrument, twin photons, particle & force fields.
The two parts are not identical, they are not one, but they do not fall into pieces, they do not allow themselves to be reduced to two separate and independent bodies or states, one of which is fundamental and the other derived, Seeks to make the schema of substantialism and subjectivism. It is not a seamless whole unity, it is not a mystical whole as the holism claims. We can not say that it is nothing but a mathematical model that we construct and that does not correspond to any reality.
This last statement is advanced by physicist Stephen Hawking. In a discussion with Roger Penrose he says: “I, on the other hand, am a positivist – I think that physical theories are only mathematical models and that it is meaningless to ask whether they correspond to reality. It may be asked whether they can make a prediction of the observations “[16]. Is it really empty to ask if a theory corresponds to a reality? No. For when the model of thinking is right there is a resemblance to the data that it reconstructs. Otherwise it would be possible to make predictions for which there is no rational explanation for them because they can not correspond to reality. Much of the physical experience is done because,
From a physical point of view, a physical reality is a fundamental reality that is not a one-body system but rather a system of two bodies or a body of bodies, a virtual cloud of particles whose bodies are surrounded. Between these bodies there is an interaction which is a component of these bodies. These physical discoveries are definitive. Yet all our metaphysical concepts are opposed to this. This cloud does not correspond to our traditional expectations of what represents stability, substance, permanence and order and what must be fundamental.
How can clouds be what we are accustomed to consider as the foundations of matter? How can this little oscillating thing be what generations of philosophers and physicists have sought to analyze in order to reach the core of things, to an ultimate reality? Is that all? From this cloud we want to filter out and bring out by metaphysical interpretation what is durable, what remains. This goes in the direction of Plato’s metaphysics of substance when Werner Heisenberg called the mathematical fomes ‘the ideas of matter’ whose elementary particles corresponded as an object.
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker called mathematics ‘the essence of matter’ and for the physicist Herwig Schopper the fields of force are the ultimate reality. Or on the other hand we want to look at these clouds as a mystical whole [holism]. Or we want to dismiss the clouds as a baseless construction [instrumentalism]. And why? Only because we can not admit that the complex interactions of the world in which we live are without solid foundations and stable. It is impossible to find an elementary object that is not dependent on other quantum objects or its own components. It is impossible to dissolve the dual nature or the multiplicity of quantum objects. The fundamental physical reality consists of correlated clouds of quantum objects.
The results
The fundamental reality is not static, stable, hard and independent. It is not formed by isolated factors, but rather by dependent body systems. Most systems consist of more than two bodies but there are no systems that exist with less than two bodies. In quantum physics we call this kind of two-body systems:
- Earth & moon
- Electron & positron
- Particle & force fields.
Nagarjuna calls his systems walker and path traveled, fire and fuel, clairvoyant subject and object seen, cause and effect, act and agent. The two models describe two-body systems that are neither separated nor really together, they do not unite and they do not fall in two. The bodies are not independent, they do not exist on their own and they can not be observed in an isolated way because they are in their constitution and even in their entire existence interdependent and can not exist And operate independently.
They are held together by interaction. One can not reduce one body to another, one can not be explained by the other. The bodies are not identical. The systems have a fragile stability that is based on mutual interactions and dependencies of their bodies which are often known, although some are only partially known and others are only in a very late stage [ In twin photons or in the consciousness-brain relation]. What is reality?
We are used to having a solid base under our feet and to see fugitive clouds in the sky. The concept of reality of Nagarjuna’s philosophy and the physical concepts of complementarity and interactions in quantum physics teach us another story: Everything is built on the sand and even the grains of sand have no stable nucleus. Their stability is based on the unstable interactions of their fundamental elements.
Notes
Source: www.buddhachannel.tv