Theos-Talk Archives (May 2005 Message tt00561)

Thanks Fali, Found this on the same web site as morphogenics
Cass

Spirituality and Science: The Holographic Universe
By Michael Talbot 




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 about 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 10 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 findings. But it has inspired others to offer 
even 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.


Holograms
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 commingle) 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 the rose. Indeed, even 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 some thing 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 
remain in 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.


The aquarium model
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 fishes, 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 
these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.


cosmos as a super hologram
In addition to its 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 all 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 longer be 
viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down 
in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything 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 
deeper 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 super holographic level 
of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.


What else the super hologram contains is an open-ended question. 
Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the super hologram is the 
matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the 
very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or 
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 super hologram, he does venture to say that 
we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts 
it, perhaps the super holographic 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.


The brain as a hologram
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 1920s, 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 1960s 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 brain in the same way that patterns of 
laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of 
film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram 
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 centimeter 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", "horselike", 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 across-correlated system.


The storage of memory is not the only neuro physiological 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 perceptions.


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 neurophysiologists. 
Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the 
holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by 
the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving 
their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli 
discovered that 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.


Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" 
reality by relying on input from a 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.


The synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views
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 super hologram.


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 interconnected, 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.


Regressions into the animal kingdom
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 a 
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 noted that 
the portion of the male of the species' 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 head do 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.


transpersonal psychology
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 regressions into apparent past-life 
incarnations. 


In later research, Grof found 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 the 
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 '60s 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 or 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. 


consciousness creates reality

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 holographic 
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 current medical 
wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease 
may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect 
changes in the hologram of the body.





The power of visualization
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 become 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 interconnected. 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 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 Castaneda 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.



A new reality
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 basil Hiley, a 
physicist at Birbeck college in London, aspect's findings "indicate 
that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".