Creation
- Holographic Universe
The Universe
as a Hologram
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 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 blu? 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
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 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 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.
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.
Creation - Holographic Universe
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
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 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 discribes 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".
