The Universe
as a hologram
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.
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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