Just got this today in my email. I have been pondering concept of our existence and reality for a while as a hologram.
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.
If universe was actually a hologram, would it mean that each of us is a small piece of hologram from which we can restore entire universe?
Read the article below. It has some science provided as explanation, yet the titel of this article was
Science and Spirituality Meet in the Holographic Universe
The Universe as a
Hologram
By Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe
By Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe
Does Objective Reality Exist?
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 suggest that objective reality
may not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the
universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic
and splendidly detailed hologram.
How
Does a Hologram Work?
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 may be 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.
The
Interconnected Nature of the Universe
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 may be infinitely interconnected.
The
electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain may be connected to the subatomic
particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and
every star that shimmers in the sky. From this vantage point, everything
interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and
pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe 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 may be 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 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".
The
Holographic Mind
Bohm
is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a
hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Stanford 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 not
able 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 Encyclopedia 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 many
pieces of information seem instantly cross-correlated with other pieces of
information -- another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion
of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, the mind 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 perceptions.
Holographic
Evidence
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. [listen to samples here and here -
earphones needed]
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, a kind of superficial illusion,
and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical
world, this too may be more a sensory illusion than objective reality.
We
may actually be "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.
The
Holographic Paradigm
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.
With
this model, 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 to understand a number of other unsolved puzzles in psychology.
In
particular, psychiatric researcher Dr. Stanislav
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 use 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 sexually arousing
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.
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.
Connecting
Hard Science With the Holographic Paradigm
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.
Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may
work so well because, in the holographic domain of thought, images can
ultimately be as real as "reality".
Even
visions and experiences involving "non-ordinary" reality become explainable
under the holographic paradigm. In his intriguing 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.
Limitless
Implications
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 may be but 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".
For
lots more fascinating material along these lines, don't miss Michael Talbot's
highly engaging book The Holographic Universe.
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