Dear All, You might find this interesting. It's worth a wade-through.
THE UNIVERSE AS A HOLOGRAM
Does Objective Reality Exist or is the Universe a Phantasm?
In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris, a
research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out
to
be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did
not
hear it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of
reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's
name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the
face
of
science.
Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances
subatomic
particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with
each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't
matter
whether they are ten feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each
particle
always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this
feat
is
that it violates Einstein's long held tenet that no communication can
travel
faster than the speed of light. Since travelling faster than the speed
of
light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect
has
caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain
away
Aspect's more radical explanations.
University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes
Aspect's
findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its
apparent solidity the Universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and
splendidly detailed hologram. To understand why Bohm makes this
startling
assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A
hologram
is a three-dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.
To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the
light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the
reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the
area where the two laser beams co-mingle) is captured on film. When the
film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark
lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another
laser
beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.
The three dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable
characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and
then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain
the
entire image of a rose. Indeed if the halves are divided again, each
snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact
version
of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a
hologram
contains all the information possessed by the whole.
The "whole in every part nature of a hologram provides us with an
entirely
new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its
history,
Western science has laboured under the bias that the best way to
understand
a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and
study
its respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the
Universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take
apart
something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of
which
it is made; we will only get smaller wholes.
This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's
discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to
remaining contact with one another regardless of the distance separating
them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back
and
forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at
some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities,
but
are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.
To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the
following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine
also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge
about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one
directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side. As
you
stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on
each
of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras
are
set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different.
But
as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware
that
there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other
also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn, when one faces
the
front the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of
the
full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must
be
instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not
the
case.
This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic
particles in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent
faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really
telling
us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more
complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium.
And,
he
adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one
another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality. Such
particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more
underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as
the
previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is
comprised of those "eidolons" the Universe is itself a projection, a
hologram.
In addition to the phantom like nature, such a Universe would possess
other
rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic
particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality al
things
in the Universe are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in a
carbon
atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that
comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats and every star
that
shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and
although
human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the
various phenomena of the Universe, all apportionments are of necessity
artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
In a holographic Universe, even time and space could no loner be viewed
as
fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a
universe
in
which nothing is truly separate from everything else, time and
three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors,
would also have to be viewed as projections of this higher order. At
its
deeper level reality is a sort of super hologram in which the past,
present
and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the
proper
tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the
superholographic
level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long forgotten past.
What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question.
Allowing,
for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has
given birth to everything else in the Universe, at the very least it
contains every subatomic particle that has been or ever will be - every
configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to
quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of
cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."
Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might
lie
hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no
reason
to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the
superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies
"an
infinity of further development". Bohm is not the only researcher who
has
found evidence that the Universe is a hologram. Working independently
in
the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram
has
also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.
Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and
where
memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have
shown
that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are
dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of landmark experiments in
the
1920's brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of
a
rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to
perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem
was
that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this
curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.
Then in the 1960's Pribram encountered the concept of holography and
realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking
for.
Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings
of
neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire
area
of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words,
Pribam
believes the brain is itself a hologram.
Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many
memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain
has
the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of
information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same
amount
of
information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other
capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information
storage - simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a
piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different
images
on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimetre
of
film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.
Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need
from
the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the
brain
functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to
tell
him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to
clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to
arrive at an answer. Instead associations like "striped, "horse like"
and
"animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly. Indeed one
of
the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every
piece
of information seems instantly cross-correlated with every other piece
of
information - another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every
portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other
portion,
it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.
The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that
becomes
more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain.
Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of
frequencies
it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies and so
on)
into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding
frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram
functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an
apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image.
Pribram
believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles
to
mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses
into
the inner world of our perception.
An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic
principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has
gained
increasing support among neurophysiologist. Argentinean-Italian
researcher
Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic principles can explain
this
ability. Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic
sound,
a
recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost
uncanny realism.
Pribam's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality
by
relying on input from frequency domain has also received a good deal of
experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is
sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously
suspected. Researchers have discovered, for instance that our visual
systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is
in
part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even
the
cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such
findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of
consciousness
that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional
perceptions.
But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the
brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For
if
the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is
there
is actually a holographic blur of frequencies and if the brain is also a
hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and
mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of
objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the
religions
of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion,
and
although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical
world, this too is an illusion. We are really "receivers" floating
through
a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency and what we extract from this sea and
transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many
extracted
out of the superhologram.
This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and
Pribram's
views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many
scientists have greeted it with scepticism, it has galvanized others. A
small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most
accurate
model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some
believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been
explainable
by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.
Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many
para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of
the
holographic paradigm. In a Universe in which individual brains are
actually
indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is
infinitely
connected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic
level.
It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel
from
the mind of individual "A" to that of individual "B" at a far distance
point
and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In
particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for
understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals
during altered states of consciousness.
In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a
psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became
convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of the species of
prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not
only
gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be
encapsulated
in such a form, but also noted that the portion of the male of the
specie's
anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was
startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge
about
such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in
certain
species of reptiles colored areas on the had to indeed play an important
role as triggers of sexual arousal.
The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his
research,
Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with
virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings
which
helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie ALTERED STATES).
Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure
zoological details, which turned out to be accurate.
Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling
psychological
phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap
into
some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little
or
no education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary
practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of
experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body
journeys,
of
precognitive glimpses of the future, of regression into apparent
past-life
incarnations.
In later research, Grof found that the same range of phenomena
manifested
in
therapy sessions, which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the
common element in such experiences appeared to be transcending of an
individual's consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or
limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations
"transpersonal experiences", and in the late 1960s he helped found a
branch
of psychology called "transpersonal psychology" devoted entirely to
their
study.
Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology
garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has
become
a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof nor any of his
colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre
psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with
the
advent of the holographic paradigm.
As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a
labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or
has
existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of
space
and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays
into
the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so
strange.
The holographic paradigm also has implications for so called hard
sciences,
like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont
College,
has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic
illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces
consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance
of
the brain as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret
as
physical.
Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused
researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the
healing
process could also be transformed by the olographic paradigm. If the
apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection
of
consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible
for
our health than the current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as
miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in
consciousness that in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.
Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization
may
work so well because in the holographic domain of thought images are
ultimately as real as "reality". Even visions and experiences involving
"non-ordinary" reality becomes explainable under the holographic
paradigm.
In his book, GIFTS OF UNKNOWN THINGS, biologist Lyall Watson describes
his
encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual
dance,
was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin
air.
Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to
watch
the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then "click" off again and
on
again several times in succession.
Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining
such
events, experiences like this become more tenable if "hard" reality is
only
a holographic projection. Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not
there" because what we call consensus reality is formulated and
ratified
at
the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely
inter-connected. If this is true, it is the most profound implication
of
the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as
Watson's are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our
minds
with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic Universe
there
are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.
What we perceive as reality is not only a canvas waiting for us to draw
upon
it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with
the
power of the mind to the phantasmagorical events experienced by
Casteneda
during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our
birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the
reality we want when we are in our dreams. Indeed, even our most
fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic
Universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to
be
seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined.
Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and
everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the
most
haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.
Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in
science
or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that
it
has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And
even
if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best
explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing
back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted
by
Bail Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London. Aspect's findings
"indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of
reality"
--------------------------------------------------