Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Paperback – 26 July 2010
by Robert Lanza (Author), Bob Berman (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 1,703 ratings
Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world―a US News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and a "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe.
Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, towards doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe's genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.
In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe―our own―from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the reader's ideas of life―time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal.
The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.
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"I found the attack on physics to be pretty compelling ... Lanza's theories [are] certainly worth debate."
-- Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger, SciGuy blog
"What makes this book both interesting and worth the effort of reading it; is the unique perspective Lanza brings to the subject matter as a physician. ... From the way [Lanza] chooses to present his arguments, it's clear he has a solid grasp of esoteric disciplines like quantum theory, special relativity and particle physics. And what makes his presentation more compelling than other efforts I've encountered is his ability and willingness to weave personal experience into the thoughts and ideas presented. His style is conversational and warm which tends to pull you along through the exposition gently. And his sense of wonder and befuddlement at shop worn enigmas like the double slit experiment, Bell's theorem, non-locality and Schrödinger's cat is as infectious as it is delightful ... I very much like what Lanza has to say in Biocentrism."
-- Midwest Book Review
Endorsements for Robert Lanza's essay on which Biocentrism is based:
"For several days now I have read and reread your article and thought about it. Like 'a brief history of time' it is indeed stimulating and brings biology into the whole. Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. Almost every society of mankind has explained the mystery of our surroundings and being by invoking a god or group of gods. Scientists work to acquire objective answers from the infinity of space or the inner machinery of the atom. Lanza proposes a biocentrist theory which ascribes the answer to the observer rather than the observed. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole. The book will appeal to an audience of many different disciplines because it is a new way of looking at the old problem of our existence. Most importantly, it makes you think."
--E. Donnall Thomas
Thomas was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and Director Emeritus of the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
"It is genuinely an exciting piece of work. I am very familiar with some of the things you say. The idea that consciousness creates reality has quantum support, as you suggest, and also coheres with some of the things biology and neuroscience are telling us about the structures of our being. To put what you are doing in a larger context, it exhibits a dramatic new Copernican reversal. Just as we now know that the sun doesn't really move but we do (we are the active agents), so you are suggesting that we are the entities that give meaning to the particular configuration of all possible outcomes we call reality. I think this is a great project."
--Ronald Green
Green is the Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor for the Study of Ethics and Human Values, and Director of Dartmouth College's Ethics Institute. Professor Green is a well-known religious studies scholar and former Chairman of the Department of Religion
"Robert Lanza, a world renowned scientist who has spanned many fields from drug delivery to stem cells to preventing animal extinction, and clearly one of the most brilliant minds of our times, has done it again. 'A New Theory of the Universe' takes into account all the knowledge we have gained over the last few centuries, and correlates them to our own beings, placing in perspective our biologic limitations that have impeded our understanding of greater truths surrounding our existence and the universe around us. This new theory is certain to revolutionize our concepts of the laws of nature for centuries to come."
--Anthony Atala
Atala is an internationally recognized scientist, and the W.H. Boyce Professor, Chair, and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
"As an astrophysicist, I focus my attention on objects that are very large and very far away, ignoring the whole issue of consciousness as a critical part of the Universe. Reading Robert Lanza's work is a wake-up call to all of us that even on the grandest scale we still depend on our minds to experience reality. Issues of "quantum weirdness" do have a place in the macroscopic world. Time and space do depend on perception. We can go about our daily lives and continue to study the physical Universe as if it exists as an objective reality (because the probabilities allow that degree of confidence), but we do so with a better awareness of an underlying biological component, thanks to Dr. Lanza. I cannot speak for NASA or other NASA scientists, but personally I look forward to hearing a more detailed explanation of this biocentric view of the Universe from Dr. Lanza."
--David Thompson
Thompson is an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. His contributions include the building and flying of prototypes of EGRET, which was launched by the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1991. He is currently with the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, and has received both the Goddard Space Flight Center & NASA Group Exceptional Achievement Awards.
"Yes, it is appropriate to ask whether our perception of space and time is a consequence of our particular neurophysiology. Yes, it is appropriate to ask how it happened that the conditions worked out to be just right for life to appear somehow on earth and then to evolve from the archaea through the eukaryotes to us. ... I'll bet the book gets a good audience. And I like to see books published that challenge my own ideas and thoughts in ways that make me think, but not ones that simply throw dogma at me. The essay is definitely of the former kind."
--R. Stephen Berry
Berry is James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago. Professor Berry is a member (and recent Home Secretary) of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. He was also former Vice President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and MacArthur Prize "Genius" Fellow.
"Science has a token of freedom that motivates scientists to study all logical possibilities that may explain the world. Robert Lanza has come up with an innovative approach to investigate reality from the viewpoint of biology. His article demands an answer to the question of whether scientists have exhausted all possible tools for studying nature. Can science bring biology into grand unified theory? A solution is suggested that involves a new concept, biocentrism. Lanza goes beyond the individual human attribute calling for interconnectedness among all living creatures forming the fundamental basis for understanding reality. A book that expands upon this unique approach is warranted, not only to alert society, but to call on it to test this novel new hypothesis."
--Gunther Kletetschka
Kletetschka is a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also a Research Professor of Physics at Catholic University of America and leading scientist working on the James Web Space Telescope.
"It's a masterpiece--truly a magnificent essay. Bob Lanza is to be congratulated for a fresh and highly erudite look at the question of how perception and consciousness shape reality and common experience. His monograph combines a deep understanding and broad insight into 20th century physics and modern biological science; in so doing, he forces a reappraisal of this hoary epistemological dilemma. Not all will agree with the proposition he advances, but most will find his writing eminently readable and his arguments both convincing and challenging. Bravo."
--Michael Lysaght
Lysaght is Professor of Medical Science and Engineering at Brown University and Director of Brown's Center for Biomedical Engineering.
About the Author
Robert Lanza
“Robert Lanza was taken under the wing of scientific giants such as psychologist B.F. Skinner, immunologist Jonas Salk, and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His mentors described him as a ‘genius,’ a ‘renegade thinker,’ even likening him to Einstein himself.” ―US News & World Report cover story
Robert Lanza has been exploring the frontiers of science for more than four decades, and is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has several hundred publications and inventions, and 20 scientific books, among them, Principles of Tissue Engineering, which is recognized as the definitive reference in the field. Others include One World: The Health & Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (with a foreword by President Jimmy Carter), and the Handbook of Stem Cells and Essentials of Stem Cell Biology, which are considered the definitive references in stem cell research.
Dr. Lanza received his B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. He was also a Fulbright Scholar, and was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, as well as the first to clone an endangered species, to demonstrate that nuclear transfer could reverse the aging process, and to generate stem cells using a method that does not require the destruction of human embryos. Dr. Lanza was awarded the 2005 Rave Award for Medicine by Wired magazine, and received the 2006 “All Star” Award for Biotechnology by Mass High Tech.
Dr. Lanza and his research have been featured in almost every media outlet in the world, including all the major television networks, CNN, Time, Newsweek, People magazine, as well as the front pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, among others. Lanza has worked with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel Laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. Lanza worked closely with B.F. Skinner at Harvard University. Lanza and Skinner (the “Father of Modern Behaviorism”) published a number of scientific papers together. He has also worked with Jonas Salk (discoverer of the polio vaccine) and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.
Bob Berman
“this is a fascinating guy” ―David Letterman
“fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight” ―Astronomy magazine
Bob Berman is the most widely read astronomer in the world. Author of more than one thousand published articles, in publications such as Discover and Astronomy magazine, where he is a monthly columnist, he is also astronomy editor of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and the author of four books. He is adjunct professor of astronomy at Marymount College, and writes and produces a weekly show on Northeast Public Radio, aired during NPR’s Weekend Edition.
===
Product details
Publisher : BenBella Books; 1st edition (26 July 2010)
Language : English
Paperback : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1935251740
ISBN-13 : 978-1935251743
Dimensions : 15.24 x 1.65 x 23.01 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 123,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
32 in Philosophy of Science
80 in Physics of Time (Books)
312 in Cosmology (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,703 ratings
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Robert Lanza
Dr. Robert Lanza is Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, Chief Scientific Officer of AIRM and a professor at Wake Forest University. TIME magazine recognized him as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and Prospect magazine named him one of the Top 50 “World Thinkers.” He has hundreds of scientific publications and over 30 books, including definitive references in the fields of stem cells, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied with polio-pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and co-authored a series of papers) with influential psychologist BF Skinner and heart transplant-pioneer Christiaan Barnard. Dr. Lanza received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, the first endangered species, and published the first-ever reports of pluripotent stem cell use in humans.
Lanza and his colleagues were also the first to demonstrate that nuclear transplantation could be used to reverse the aging process and to generate immune-compatible tissues, including the first organ tissue-engineered from cloned cells. One of his greatest early achievements came from his demonstration that techniques used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis could be used to generate human embryonic stem cells without embryonic destruction.
He and colleagues have also succeeded in differentiating human pluripotent stem cells into retinal cells, and has shown that they provide long-term benefit in animal models of vision loss. Using this technology some forms of blindness may be curable, including macular degeneration and Stargardt disease, a currently untreatable form eye disease that causes blindness in teenagers and young adults. Lanza's company received FDA approval to carry out clinical trials in the US using them to treat degenerative eye diseases, as well approval for the first human pluripotent stem cell trial in Europe. The first patients reported improved vision in the eyes treated with the cells, which The Guardian said "represents a huge scientific achievement."
Dr. Lanza and his colleagues published the first-ever report of human pluripotent stem cells transplanted into human patients. After surgery, evidence confirmed cells had attached and continued to persist during the study. There were no signs of tumorigenicity or rejection. The patients who received the stem cell transplants say their lives have been transformed by the experimental procedure--they report that they can use their computers, thread a needle, or even go to the mall or airport on their own.
Lanza has also been a major player in the scientific revolution that has led to the documentation that nuclear transfer/transcription factors can restore developmental potential in a differentiated cell. One of his successes was showing that it is feasible to generate functional oxygen-carrying red blood cells from human pluripotent stem cells. The blood cells were comparable to normal transfusable blood and could serve as a potentially inexhaustible source of "universal" blood. His team also discovered how to generate functional hemangioblasts - a population of "ambulance" cells - from hES cells. In animals, these cells quickly repaired vascular damage, cutting the death rate after a heart attack in half and restoring the blood flow to ischemic limbs that might otherwise have to be amputated.
Lanza and a team lead by Kwang-Soo Kim at Harvard University have also reported a safe method for generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Human iPS cells were created from skin cells by direct delivery of proteins, thus eliminating the harmful risks associated with genetic manipulation. The Editors of the prestigious journal Nature selected Lanza and Kim's paper on protein reprogramming as one of five "Research Highlights." Discover magazine stated, "Lanza's single-minded quest to usher in this new age has paid dividends in scientific insights and groundbreaking discoveries."
Dr. Lanza has received numerous awards, including being named one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World"; the 2013 Il Leone di San Marco award in Medicine (The Italian Heritage and Culture Committee, along with Regis Philbin [in Entertainment]); including an NIH Director's Award (2010) for "Translating Basic Science Discoveries into New and Better Treatments"; the 2010 'Movers and Shakers' Who Will Shape Biotech Over the Next 20 Years (BioWorld)(along with Craig Venter and President Barack Obama); the 2007 100 Most Inspiring People in the Life-Sciences Industry (PharmaVOICE, "For his discoveries 'behind the medicines making a significant impact on the pipelines of today and of the future'"; the 2007 Outstanding Contribution in Contemporary Biology Award (Brown University, "For his groundbreaking research and contributions in stem cell science and biology"; the 2006 All-Star Award for Biotechnology (MA High Tech, for "pushing stem cells' future"); the 2005 Rave Award for Medicine (Wired magazine, "For eye-opening work on embryonic stem cells"); and Lanza is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare, Who's Who in Science and Engineering; Who's Who in American Education, and Who's Who in Technology, among others. Dr. Lanza has served in numerous national and international leadership capacities, including Conference Co-Chairman, International Symposium on Stem Cells (Tianjin, China 2008); Stem Cell Advisory Committee, International Stem Cell Registry; He has given keynote addresses at dozens of national and international societies, including ASAIO (2001), Annual Molecular & Cellular Biology Symposium (2002), Biotechniques Live/Drug Discovery Technology & Development World Congress (2005), International Stem Cell Conference (2007), Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS)(2007), Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum (2010), among others.
Dr. Lanza and his research have been featured in almost every media outlet in the world, including CNN, TIME, Newsweek, People, as well as the front pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, among others. Lanza has worked with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter, renowned Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner (the "Father of modern behaviorism"), Jonas Salk (discoverer of the Polio vaccine), and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His current research focuses on stem cells and regenerative medicine and their potential to provide therapies for some of the world's most deadly and debilitating conditions.
In 2007, Lanza published a feature article, "A New Theory of the Universe" in The American Scholar, a leading intellectual journal which has previously published works by Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead, and Carl Sagan, among others. His theory places biology above the other sciences in an attempt to solve one of nature's biggest puzzles, the theory of everything that other disciplines have been pursuing for the last century. This new view has become known as Biocentrism. In 2009, he co-authored a book "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe" with leading astronomer Bob Berman. In biocentrism, space and time are forms of animal sense perception, rather than external physical objects. Understanding this more fully yields answers to several major puzzles of mainstream science, and offers a new way of understanding everything from the microworld (for instance, the reason for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the double-slit experiment) to the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe. Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas stated "Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole."
You can read more about Dr. Robert Lanza's work at:
http://www.robertlanza.com/
http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/
https://beyondbiocentrism.com
See more on the author's page
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Bob Berman
Robert Berman, known as Bob Berman, is an American astronomer, author, and science popularizer. He runs Overlook Observatory at his home in Woodstock, New York, USA. He was an adjunct professor of astronomy at the liberal arts college, Marymount Manhattan College, from 1996 to 2000 and has appeared on CBS This Morning, the Today Show, and the Late Show with David Letterman.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Benjamin Thomas (Bob Berman - IdeaFestival 2009 Uploaded by Edward) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Maarten
2.0 out of 5 stars Yeah its cute but...
Reviewed in Australia on 17 December 2018
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The book was riddled with common logical fallacies and hard to get through without facepalming. The idea is nice, but really it reads more like a coping mechanism of the author rather than a serious alternative explanation of reality
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B DE JONG
5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary
Reviewed in Australia on 28 February 2021
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A brilliant book that turns life as we know it on its head.
Read this if you want to know the meaning of life.
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Alex
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking and fascinating.
Reviewed in Australia on 18 June 2014
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Manages to deal with complex subject matter in an easy to understand manner. Fascinating & mind boggling - I definitely recommend it!
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GRAHAM COTTER
4.0 out of 5 stars Biocentrism
Reviewed in Australia on 17 June 2014
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A fresh new way of looking at life, and finding answers to questions that have been asked for so long!
Well worth the money!
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Mark A. Hodgson
3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but too much warped reasoning - for me anyway!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 April 2019
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I initially bought this book because I was looking for a study on “consciousness” specifically. Whilst I enjoyed it, I find some of the central tenets somewhat confused. Much of it tends towards solipsism- as I understand that field anyway. There are also some rather unwarranted conclusions jumped to - especially for a work of science. For example he talks about the Big Bang as being a description of the universe having a birth which therefore means it will have an end. Why? That does not necessarily follow in strict reasoning. Also the tenet that observation
‘Creates’ the world or objects being observed seems to me like wanting to have your cake and eat it. Sure the experience of the universe only happens in the brain (for arguments sake, although why only in the brain?) - viz the tree falling in the forest actually makes no sound - it’s the sense organ of a conscious being that creates the sound but interpreting the vibrations. But there must be something there creating the vibrations in the case of sound or reflections in the case of the moon being observed for the sense organ to pick it up. The text seems to ride rough shod over cause and effect. If I create the moon by observing it - what are all the other people in the world seeing? Or am I the only person in the world? Fascinating book but far too many holes in the train of logic for me.
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MB
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting - but deeply flawed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 June 2021
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An interesting read, but it contains nothing new. It addresses questions that I suspect most human beings have thought of at one time or another. It is interesting in so far as it presents someone’s opinion as a comparison to one’s own. Therein lies a potential problem, however. So far as I could ascertain, Lanza appears to make no distinction between fact and his own opinion. Indeed, in reading the book I developed the feeling that in Lanza’s world there may be only two types of opinions; his own opinions and the wrong opinions.
It is unfortunate that Lanza appears to take the line that physicists are not the folk to further knowledge in any way whatsoever in the area of consciousness. Yet he fails to say how he would further such knowledge or how he thinks it may be furthered. If the autobiographical sections were removed from this book, the remainder might read somewhat like the introduction to a proposal for work but with no consideration of the work that is required and/or how it may be approached. It does not address the issue of its own subheading “How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe”.
The warning is there before the book is opened. Lanza adds ‘MD’ after his name on the cover. Most authoritative works for popular consumption are not graced with the author’s graffiti on the cover. Respect for opinions need to be earned not demanded.
Despite the various issues outlined above, the work was interesting in so far as the subject matter gels with some other lines of interest that I am pursuing currently. I will therefore persevere and take a look at some of Lanza’s more recent work. There is indeed one glimmer of hope in the book. Lanza insists that physics is not the way to progress the understanding of consciousness. He seems to find it necessary to criticise not only ‘physics’ generally but also physicists. His aim appears to be to promote the idea that biology should take over from the point that physics has reached (This is arguably similar to events at the start of the twentieth century when physics took over from chemistry as the leading area of advancement). Then, at the very end, he concedes “It may take a multidisciplinary approach to achieve tangible results…”. Indeed, I could not agree more. However, this book does nothing to move towards that. It appears to try to drive wedges between the sciences and offers absolutely no suggestion as to how his “biocentrism” or the presumably larger field of “biology” can or will (given appropriate research) assist in the aim of understanding consciousness. It may be that it will need scientists more willing to build on what exists, rather than criticising it, to make progress.
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Cate
5.0 out of 5 stars A transfixing reading experience
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 October 2019
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When you are prepared to read this book, it will bring you spiritual relief. Intellectually, you will appreciate the conclusions reached by such a brilliant polymath, because he's reached them with humility and care in his reasoning.
4 people found this helpful
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LightBringer
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that makes you glance away from the page ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2017
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A book that makes you glance away from the page every now and then, to look at the world in a completely new way but also as if someone has just put into words how you have always felt about reality.
9 people found this helpful
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Bethany
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Perspective
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 September 2020
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This opened my mind a lot and has made me dive deeper into different ideologies about the nature of our existence.
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