Beyond Biocentrism
One of the most recent books I have read that has had a profound impact upon the way I think, as well as having influenced my art practice, is the seminal work 'Beyond Biocentrism' by Robert Lanza. It is a cutting edge, modern disposition of quantum science and recent high end scientific discoveries that are effectively proving the ancient philosophical musings of the great thinkers of old, such as Zeno and Aristotle. Primarily the book elucidates the concept that consciousness is effectively the foundation of reality and that reality and time themselves are a non-linear, ephemeral holographic manifestation of our minds capacity to actuate, through observation, a myriad of quantum potentialities made manifest as 'physical form' by the decoupling or collapsing of probability waves. It is a book that illuminates the problematic limitations of classical science and the erroneous conceptions associated with such static and intractable modes of thought.
It is this lucidity of mind that I am drawn to. Throughout my life I could never truly affirm the way my mental and emotional processes work with the standardised framework that civilisation claimed to be the epitome of understanding. Forever, throughout the history of human civilisation people have delivered the proclamation of ‘the truth’, beginning with tribal, ritualistic superstition as maintained still by certain isolated groupings of primitive peoples, extending to the ancient tradition that pillars held up the sky and the heavens. Such a tradition can be seen in Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew cultures, the former being represented by Atlas, who was converted into a mountain in Morocco, condemned by Titanomachy after the war of the Titans to perpetually hold up the heavens as a means of punishment. Then of course 500 years ago the seemingly wisest sages believed the Earth to be flat due to the limitations of their physical awareness, and that if one sailed too far one would simply fall off the ends of the planet. To reveal limitations is the essence of progress. Creativity is as much about revealing what is stultifying as it is about discovering more advanced means of thought, originality and artistic expression to replace such antiquated academic persuasions.