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 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 traveling 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.
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 labored 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 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.
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 these "eidolons", the
universe is itself a projection, a hologram.
In addition to its phantomlike 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
superhologram 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 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 bluü 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 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 backÿ through ome 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 ever 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 he 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.
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 skepticism, 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.
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 encapsuled in
such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species'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 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.
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.
The holographic prardigm 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.
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 phantasmagoric 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.
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".
Vanguard notes...
This is one of the most fascinating files we have
seen since it seems to offer a hypothesis which "synthesizes" a
multitude of phenomena including that generally classed as
"paranormal." Related files on KeelyNet are the complete MIND series
and VEDA1.
From Keelynet @ http://keelynet.com/biology/reality.htm
For more information
about our holographic universe see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/holographic%20universe
- See ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section
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