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.

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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.

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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.

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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
blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic
storehouse of "All That Is."

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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 every other portion, it is perhaps
nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

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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?

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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.

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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 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.

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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".



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