Who in the world am I? asked Alice (in Wonderland). Ah, that s the great puzzle!

The q uestion may make you wonder about taking time to ponder such philosophical babbl e. The answer is usually defined by what you can control. A reply might be, I can wiggle my toes but I can t move the legs of the table. The dividing line between s elf and nonself is taken to be the skin. This is reinforced every day of our liv es every time you fill out a form: I am ___ (your name here). It s such an integra l part of our lives that the question is as unnatural as scrutinizing breathing. Years ago I published an experiment (Science, 212, 695, 1981) with Harvard psych ologist B.F. Skinner (the father of modern behaviorism) showing that like us, anim als are capable of self-awareness. We taught pigeons to use a mirror to locate a s pot on their body which they couldn t see directly. Although similar behavior in p rimates is attributed to a self-concept, it s clear there are different degrees of self-awareness. For instance, we didn t report in our paper that the pigeons atta cked their own reflection in the mirror. Biocentrism suggests we humans may be a s oblivious to certain aspects of who we are as the pigeons. We are more than we ve been taught in biology class. Everyday life makes this obvi ous. Last weekend I set out on a walk. There was a roar of dirt bikes from the n earby sandpit, but as I went further into the forest the sound gradually disappe ared. In a clearing I noticed sprays of tiny flowers (Houstonia caerulea) dottin g the ground. I squatted down to examine them. They were about a quarter-of-an-i nch in diameter with yellow centers and petals ranging in color from white to de ep purple. I was wondering why these flowers had such bright coloring, when I sa w a fuzzy little creature with a body the size of a BB darting in and out of the flowers. Its wings were awkwardly large and beating so fast I could hardly see their outline. This tiny world was as wondrous as Pandora in Avatar. It took my breath away. There we were, this fuzzy little creature and I, two living objects that had ent ered into each others world. It flew off to the next flower, and I, for my part, stepped back careful not to destroy its habitat. I wondered if our little intera ction was any different from that of any other two objects in the Universe. Was this little insect just another collection of atoms proteins and molecules spinn ing like planets around the sun? It s true that the laws of chemistry can tackle the rudimentary biology of living systems, and as a medical doctor I can recite in detail the chemical foundations and cellular organization of animal cells: oxidation, biophysical metabolism, a ll the carbohydrates, lipids and amino acid patterns. But there was more to this little bug than the sum of its biochemical functions. A full understanding of l ife can t be found only by looking at cells and molecules. Conversely, physical ex istence can t be divorced from the animal life and structures that coordinate sens e perception and experience (even if these, too, have a physical correlate in ou r consciousness). It seems likely that this creature was the center of its own sphere of physical reality just as I was the center of mine. We were connected not only by being al ive at the same moment in Earth s 4.5 billion year history, but by something sugge stive a pattern that s a template for existence itself. The bug had little eyes and antenna, and possessed sensory cells that transmitte d messages to its brain. Perhaps my existence in its universe was limited to som e shadow off in the distance. I don t know. But as I stood up and left, I no doubt dispersed into the haze of probability surrounding the creature s little world. Science has failed to recognize those properties of life that make it fundamenta l to our existence. This view of the world in which life and consciousness are b ottom-line in understanding the larger universe biocentrism revolves around the way our consciousness relates to a physical process. It s a vast mystery that I ve p ursued my entire life with a lot of help along the way, standing on the shoulder s of some of the most lauded minds of the modern age. I ve also come to conclusion s that would shock my predecessors, placing biology above the other sciences in an attempt to find the theory of everything that has evaded other disciplines. We re taught since childhood that the universe can be fundamentally divided into t wo entities ourselves, and that which is outside of us. This seems logical. Self i s commonly defined by what we can control. We can move our fingers but I can t wig

gle your toes. The dichotomy is based largely on manipulation, even if basic bio logy tells us we ve no more control over most of the trillions of cells in our bod y than over a rock or a tree. Consider everything that you see around you right now this page, for example, or your hands and fingers. Language and custom say that it all lies outside us in the external world. Yet we can t see anything through the vault of bone that surro unds our brain. Everything you see and experience your body, the trees and sky a re part of an active process occurring in your mind. You are this process, not j ust that tiny part you control with motor neurons. You re not an object you are your consciousness. You re a unified being, not just yo ur wriggling arm or foot, but part of a larger equation that includes all the co lors, sensations and objects you perceive. If you divorce one side of the equati on from the other you cease to exist. Indeed, experiments confirm that particles only exist with real properties if they re observed. Until the mind sets the scaf folding of things in place, they can t be thought of as having any real existence neither duration nor position in space. As the great physicist John Wheeler said , No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. That s why in real experiments, not just the properties of matter but space and time themse lves depend on the observer. Your consciousness isn t just part of the equation th e equation is you. After she left the pool of tears, the Caterpillar asked Alice Who are you? This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, I I ha rdly know, Sir Perhaps the Hookah-Smoking caterpillar, sitting there on his mushroo m, knew that this unusually short question was not only rude, but difficult inde ed. Robert Lanza, MD has published extensively in leading scientific journals. His b ook Biocentrism (co-authored with astronomer Bob Berman) lays out the full scienti fic argument for his theory of everything.