Reality is a haulogram
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.
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.
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, 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.
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. 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."
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.
Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.
His 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 storagesimply 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.
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.
he 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.
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.
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