One of my reasons for starting this platform was to keep track of scientific developments suggesting that the universe is mental, and to keep a thermometer in the culture I’m living through. I believe the age of materialism is coming to an end, so I want to report on whether, and how, this shift is happening.

The best way to follow it is, of course, to read the scientific literature. But it’s also worth looking at platforms such as Quora to see whether the discussion around topics like the relationship between consciousness and the brain, or life after death, is changing.

It has been almost ten years since I began seriously engaging with this worldview, and I do notice a shift. I see it in the way scientists approach the topic: from being 100 percent convinced that materialism is correct to a more open attitude toward alternatives. When I started, the view that the world is created by consciousness and doesn’t exist outside of it was an outlier in Quora discussions. Today, I would say the answers are roughly split 50-50 between materialism and a mental universe.

So there is certainly progress. There is also a lot of ignorance. I don’t mean that as a criticism of people, but the question of metaphysics, of what the universe actually is, is largely absent from daily life. At least, that is my experience in the Netherlands. Many people carry materialism as a subconscious foundation, along with all the assumptions that come with it: “you only live once,” “when your brain is gone, you are gone,” and so on.

That brings me to the main topic of this mental note. If we proponents of the mental universe want to “spread the gospel”, what should we call it? The major proponents of this worldview each use their own terminology, and no winner has emerged yet.

Bernardo Kastrup, the idealist philosopher who promotes this worldview through the Essentia Foundation, calls it Analytic Idealism. Donald Hoffman, who I would argue is one of the most prominent and successful communicators of these ideas, calls it Conscious Realism.

Two other favorites of mine, Robert Lanza and Thomas Campbell, also have their own terms: Biocentrism and My Big TOE. I have adopted Biocentrism for this website, because I like the term and because it was Lanza who set me on this path of discovery. I use it interchangeably with Mental Universe, after the essay by Richard Conn Henry, because I find it a clear term.

Then there is Non-Dualism, borrowed from Eastern philosophical teachings. This might be the most widespread term in the discussion.

So what should newcomers who want to make this worldview better known call it? I don’t know; it is an open question. Perhaps the final term hasn’t emerged yet. What I do know is that, slowly but surely, the tide is turning, and hopefully we can replace materialism with a worldview far better suited to the challenges we face as a species.

To be continued.