More About David Bohm
LIFEWORK OF DAVID BOHM
RIVER OF TRUTH by Will KEEPIN
posted online by Alex PATERSON
21 Oct 2007
The Future of Humanity - A dialogue between Krishnamurti and David Bohm
When western science meets eastern spirituality...
THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY is a dialogue between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm which took place in Brockwood Park, England in 1983. Starting with the questions - Are psychologists really concerned with the future of man? Are they concerned with the human being conforming to the present society, or going beyond that? - the conversation embarks on the incredible journey of the unconditioned mind and asks if the consciousness of mankind can be changed through time.
Download Part 1 (.torrent - format: AVI - size: 350mb)
Download Part 2 (.torrent - format: AVI - size: 350mb)
20 Oct 2007
The Holographic Universe
By Michael Talbot
Reviewed by Michael Kisor
The Holographic Universe is a "must read" for anyone with an open, inquiring mind and a curiosity about the cosmos in which we reside. You are likely to find the material presented here to be nothing short of astounding. The ramifications for humanity are staggering as this book seriously challenges the basis for our cultural view of reality: materialism. After reading The Holographic Universe, you will understand why so many people are starting to say that a paradigm shift in our science and culture is at hand.
Science's orthodoxy still resists abandoning materialism, but the scientific handwriting has been on the wall ever since 1905 when Einstein delivered his papers on Special Relativity and The Photovoltaic Effect. Subsequent research in Quantum Mechanics (sub-atomic physics) continues to usher us away from materialism and toward something far more interesting. History has shown us that radically new advances in worldviews almost never occur with the blessing of the Old Guard; it invariably takes fresh new minds to accept change of such magnitude. So it is with our society. As we move into the next millennium, concepts similar to those presented by Talbot will become mainstream and commonplace. As a result, our society will also be transformed.
The concepts presented in this book are a cornerstone of Quanta-Gaia -- the quest to better understand the cosmos and our role in it. After reading this book, you will either dismiss it as fantasy, like so many dismissed Einstein's papers in 1905, or you will be impressed by the magnitude of change which is at hand.
Other comments on The Holographic Universe:Lyall Watson, author of Supernature writes: "For a while now, science has been converging with common sense, catching up at last with experience, confirming a widespread suspicion that things are far more connected than traditional physics ever allowed. The Holographic Universe is an elegant affirmation of this process, a lifeline that helps to bridge the artificial gap that has opened up between mind and matter, between us and the rest of the cosmos."
Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Space, Time & Medicine writes: Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicist David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding-of-the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near-death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.
"We desperately need new models of reality to fire the imagination of what is possible and to give us new visions of our place in the cosmos. Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe does this. It is a wake-up call to wonder, an adventure in ideas. If you need to maintain your idea that science has proved that 'It's all mechanical,' that there is no room in the universe for consciousness, soul, and spirit, don't read this book."
Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., author of Taking the Quantum Leap writes: "The concept of the universe as a giant hologram containing both matter and consciousness as a single field will, I am sure, excite anyone who has asked the question, 'What is reality?' This book may answer that question once and for all."
Author's Introduction to The Holographic Universe:
In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker's adventure begins when a beam of light shoots out of the robot Artoo Detoo and projects a miniature three-dimensional image of Princess Leia. Luke watches spellbound as the ghostly sculpture of light begs for someone named Obi-wan Kenobi to come to her assistance. The image is a hologram, a three-dimensional picture made with the aid of a laser, and the technological magic required to make such images is remarkable. But what is even more astounding is that some scientists are beginning to believe the universe itself is a kind of giant hologram, a splendidly detailed illusion no more or less real than the image of Princess Leia that starts Luke on his quest.
Put another way, there is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it -- from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons -- are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time.
The main architects of this astonishing idea are two of the world's most eminent thinkers: University of London physicist David Bohm, a protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists; and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and author of the classic neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain. Intriguingly, Bohm and Pribram arrived at their conclusions independently and while working from two very different directions. Bohm became convinced of the universe's holographic nature only after years of dissatisfaction with standard theories' inability to explain all of the phenomena encountered in quantum physics. Pribram became convinced because of the failure of standard theories of the brain to explain various neurophysiological puzzles.
However, after arriving at their views, Bohm and Pribram quickly realized the holographic model explained a number of other mysteries as well, including the apparent inability of any theory, no matter how comprehensive, ever to account for all the phenomena encountered in nature; the ability of individuals with- hearing in only one ear to determine the direction from which a sound originates; and our ability to recognize the face of someone we have not seen for many years even if that person has changed considerably in the interim.
But the most staggering thing about the holographic model was that it suddenly made sense of a wide range of phenomena so elusive they generally have been categorized outside the province of scientific understanding. These include telepathy, precognition, mystical feelings of oneness with the universe, and even psychokinesis, or the ability of the mind to move physical objects without anyone touching them.
Indeed, it quickly became apparent to the ever growing number of scientists who came to embrace the holographic model that it helped explain virtually all paranormal and mystical experiences, and in the last half-dozen years or so it has continued to galvanize researchers and shed light on an increasing number of previously inexplicable phenomena. For example:
In 1980 University of Connecticut psychologist Dr. Kenneth Ring proposed that near-death experiences could be explained by the holographic model. Ring, who is president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, believes such experiences, as well as death itself, are really nothing more than the shifting of a person's consciousness from one level of the hologram of reality to another.
In 1985 Dr. Stanislav Grof, chief of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published a book in which he concluded that existing neurophysiological models of the brain are inadequate and only a holographic model can explain such things as archetypal experiences, encounters with the collective unconscious, and other unusual phenomena experienced during altered states of consciousness.
At the 1987 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams held in Washington, D.C., physicist Fred Alan Wolf delivered a talk in which he asserted that the holographic model explains lucid dreams (unusually vivid dreams in which the dreamer realizes he or she is awake). Wolf believes such dreams are actually visits to parallel realities, and the holographic model will ultimately allow us to develop a "physics of consciousness" which will enable us to begin to explore more fully these other-dimensional levels of existence.
In his 1987 book entitled Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, Dr. F. David Peat, a physicist at Queen's University in Canada, asserted that synchronicities (coincidences that are so unusual and so psychologically meaningful they don't seem to be the result of chance alone) can be explained by the holographic model. Peat believes such coincidences are actually "flaws in the fabric of reality." They reveal that our thought processes are much more intimately connected to the physical world than has been hitherto suspected. These are only a few of the thought-provoking ideas that will be explored in this book. Many of these ideas are extremely controversial. Indeed, the holographic model itself is highly controversial and is by no means accepted by a majority of scientists. Nonetheless, and as we shall see, many important and impressive thinkers do support it and believe it may be the most accurate picture of reality we have to date.
The holographic model has also received some dramatic experimental support. In the field of neurophysiology numerous studies have corroborated Pribram's various predictions about the holographic nature of memory and perception. Similarly, in 1982 a landmark experiment performed by a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Optics, in Paris, demonstrated that the web of subatomic particles that compose our physical universe -- the very fabric of reality itself -- possesses what appears to be an undeniable "holographic" property. These findings will also be discussed in the book.
In addition to the experimental evidence, several other things add weight to the holographic hypothesis. Perhaps the most important considerations are the character and achievements of the two men who originated the idea. Early in their careers, and before the holographic model was even a glimmer in their thoughts, each amassed accomplishments that would inspire most researchers to spend the rest of their academic lives resting on their laurels. In the 1940s Pribram did pioneering work on the limbic system, a region of the brain involved in emotions and behavior. Bohm's work in plasma physics in the 1950s is also considered landmark.
But even more significantly, each has distinguished himself in another way. It is a way even the most accomplished men and women can seldom call their own, for it is measured not by mere intelligence or even talent. It is measured by courage, the tremendous resolve it takes to stand up for one's convictions even in the face of overwhelming opposition. While he was a graduate student, Bohm did doctoral work with Robert Oppenheimer. Later, in 1951, when Oppenheimer came under the perilous scrutiny of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities, Bohm was called to testify against him and refused. As a result he lost his job at Princeton and never again taught in the Umted States, moving first to Brazil and then to London.
Early in his career Pribram faced a similar test of mettle. In 1935 a Portuguese neurologist named Egas Moniz devised what he believed was the perfect treatment for mental illness. He discovered that by boring into an individual's skull with a surgical pick and severing the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain he could make the most troublesome patients docile. He called the procedure a prefrontal lobotomy, and by the 1940s it had become such a popular medical technique that Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize. In the 1950s the procedure's popularity continued and it became a tool, like the McCarthy hearings, to stamp out cultural undesirables. So accepted was its use for this purpose that the surgeon Walter Freeman, the most outspoken advocate for the procedure in the United States, wrote unashamedly that lobotomies "made good American citizens" out of society's misfits, "schizophrenics, homosexuals, and radicals."
During this time Pribram came on the medical scene. However unlike many of his peers, Pribram felt it was wrong to tamper so recklessly with the brain of another. So deep were his convictions that while working as a young neurosurgeon in Jacksonville, Florida, he opposed the accepted medical wisdom of the day and refused to allow any lobotomies to be performed in the ward he was overseeing. Later at Yale he maintained his controversial stance, and his then radical views very nearly lost him his job.
Bohm and Pribram's commitment to stand up for what they believe in, regardless of the consequences, is also evident in the holographic model. As we shall see, placing their not inconsiderable reputations behind such a controversial idea is not the easiest path either could have taken. Both their courage and the vision they have demonstrated in the past again add weight to the holographic idea.
One final piece of evidence in favor of the holographic model is the paranormal itself. This is no small point, for in the last several decades a remarkable body of evidence has accrued suggesting that our current understanding of reality, the solid and comforting sticks-and stones picture of the world we all learned about in high-school science class, is wrong. Because these findings cannot be explained by any of our standard scientific models, science has in the main ignored them. However, the volume of evidence has reached the point where this is no longer a tenable situation.
To give just one example, in 1987, physicist Robert G. Jahn and clinical psychologist Brenda J. Dunne, both at Princeton University, announced that after a decade of rigorous experimentation by their Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, they had accumulated unequivocal evidence that the mind can psychically interact with physical reality. More specifically, Jahn and Dunne found that through mental concentration alone, human beings are able to affect the way certain kinds of machines operate. This is an astounding finding and one that cannot be accounted for in terms of our standard picture of reality.
It can be explained by the holographic view, however. Conversely, because paranormal events cannot be accounted for by our current scientific understandings, they cry out for a new way of looking at the universe, a new scientific paradigm. In addition to showing how the holographic model can account for the paranormal, the book will also examine how mounting evidence in favor of the paranormal in turn actually seems to necessitate the existence of such a model.
The fact that the paranormal cannot be explained by our current scientific worldview is only one of the reasons it remains so controversial. Another is that psychic functioning is often very difficult to pin down in the lab, and this has caused many scientists to conclude it therefore does not exist. This apparent elusiveness will also be discussed in the book.
An even more important reason is that contrary to what many of us have come to believe, science is not prejudice-free. I first learned this a number of years ago when I asked a well-known physicist what he thought about a particular parapsychological experiment. The physicist (who had a reputation for being skeptical of the paranormal) looked at me and with great authority said the results revealed "no evidence of any psychic functioning whatsoever." I had not yet seen the results, but because I respected the physicist's intelligence and reputation, I accepted his judgment without question. Later when I examined the results for myself, I was stunned to discover the experiment had produced very striking evidence of psychic ability. I realized then that even well-known scientists can possess biases and blind spots.
Unfortunately this is a situation that occurs often in the investigation of the paranormal. In a recent article inAmerican Psychologist, Yale psychologist Irvin L. Child examined how a well-known series of ESP dream experiments conducted at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, had been treated by the scientific establishment. Despite the dramatic evidence supportive of ESP uncovered by the experimenters, Child found their work had been almost completely ignored by the scientific community. Even more distressing, in the handful of scientific publications that had bothered to comment on the experiments, he found the research had been so "severely distorted" its importance was completely obscured.
How is this possible? One reason is science is not always as objective as we would like to believe. We view scientists with a bit of awe, and when they tell us something we are convinced it must be true We forget they are only human and subject to the same religious, philosophical, and cultural prejudices as the rest of us. This is unfortunate for as this book will show, there is a great deal of evidence that the universe encompasses considerably more than our current worldview allows. But why is science so resistant to the paranormal in particular? This is a more difficult question. In commenting on the resistance he experienced to his own unorthodox views on health, Yale surgeon Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, author of the best-selling book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, asserts that it is because people are addicted to their beliefs. Siegel says this is why when you try to change someone's belief they act like an addict.
There seems to be a good deal of truth to Siegel's observation, which perhaps is why so many of civilization's greatest insights and advances have at first been greeted with such passionate denial. We are addicted to our beliefs and we do act like addicts when someone tries to wrest from us the powerful opium of our dogmas. And since Western science has devoted several centuries to not believing in the paranormal, it is not going to surrender its addiction lightly.
I am lucky. I have always known there was more to the world than is generally accepted. I grew up in a psychic family, and from an early age I experienced firsthand many of the phenomena that will be talked about in this book. Occasionally, and when it is relevant to the topic being discussed, I will relate a few of my own experiences. Although they can only be viewed as anecedotal evidence, for me they have provided the most compelling proof of all that we live in a universe we are only just beginning to fathom, and I include them because of the insight they offer.
Lastly, because the holographic concept is still very much an idea in the making and is a mosaic of many different points of view and pieces of evidence, some have argued that it should not be called a model or theory until these disparate points of view are integrated into a more unified whole. As a result, some researchers refer to the ideas as the holographic paradigm. Others prefer holographic analogy, holographic metaphor, and so on. In this book and for the sake of diversity I have employed all of these expressions, including holographic model and holographic theory, but do not mean to imply that the holographic idea has achieved the status of a model or theory in the strictest sense of these terms.
In this same vein it is important to note that although Bohm and Pribram are the originators of the holographic idea, they do not embrace all of the views and conclusions put forward in this book. Rather, this is a book that looks not only at Bohm and Pribram's theories, but at the ideas and conclusions of numerous researchers who have been influenced by the holographic model and who have interpreted it in their own sometimes controversial ways.
Throughout this book I also discuss various ideas from quantum physics, the branch of physics that studies subatomic particles (electrons, protons, and so on). Because I have written on this subject before, I am aware that some people are intimidated by the term quantum physics and are afraid they will not be able to understand its concepts. My experience has taught me that even those who do not know any mathematics are able to understand the kinds of ideas from physics that are touched upon in this book. You do not even need a background in science. All you need is an open mind if you happen to glance at a page and see a scientific term you do not know. I have kept such terms down to a minimum, and on those occasions when it was necessary to use one, I always explain it before continuing on with the text.
So don't be afraid. Once you have overcome your "fear of the water," I think you'll find swimming among quantum physics' strange and fascinating ideas much easier than you thought. I think you'll also find that pondering a few of these ideas might even change the way you look at the world. In fact, it is my hope that the ideas contained in the following chapters will change the way you look at the world. It is with this humble desire that I offer this book.
Copyright © 1991 by Michael Talbot Published by HarperPerennial/HarperCollins ISBN 0-06-092258-3
Read more...
Reviewed by Michael Kisor
The Holographic Universe is a "must read" for anyone with an open, inquiring mind and a curiosity about the cosmos in which we reside. You are likely to find the material presented here to be nothing short of astounding. The ramifications for humanity are staggering as this book seriously challenges the basis for our cultural view of reality: materialism. After reading The Holographic Universe, you will understand why so many people are starting to say that a paradigm shift in our science and culture is at hand.
Science's orthodoxy still resists abandoning materialism, but the scientific handwriting has been on the wall ever since 1905 when Einstein delivered his papers on Special Relativity and The Photovoltaic Effect. Subsequent research in Quantum Mechanics (sub-atomic physics) continues to usher us away from materialism and toward something far more interesting. History has shown us that radically new advances in worldviews almost never occur with the blessing of the Old Guard; it invariably takes fresh new minds to accept change of such magnitude. So it is with our society. As we move into the next millennium, concepts similar to those presented by Talbot will become mainstream and commonplace. As a result, our society will also be transformed.
The concepts presented in this book are a cornerstone of Quanta-Gaia -- the quest to better understand the cosmos and our role in it. After reading this book, you will either dismiss it as fantasy, like so many dismissed Einstein's papers in 1905, or you will be impressed by the magnitude of change which is at hand.
Other comments on The Holographic Universe:Lyall Watson, author of Supernature writes: "For a while now, science has been converging with common sense, catching up at last with experience, confirming a widespread suspicion that things are far more connected than traditional physics ever allowed. The Holographic Universe is an elegant affirmation of this process, a lifeline that helps to bridge the artificial gap that has opened up between mind and matter, between us and the rest of the cosmos."
Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Space, Time & Medicine writes: Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicist David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding-of-the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near-death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.
"We desperately need new models of reality to fire the imagination of what is possible and to give us new visions of our place in the cosmos. Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe does this. It is a wake-up call to wonder, an adventure in ideas. If you need to maintain your idea that science has proved that 'It's all mechanical,' that there is no room in the universe for consciousness, soul, and spirit, don't read this book."
Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., author of Taking the Quantum Leap writes: "The concept of the universe as a giant hologram containing both matter and consciousness as a single field will, I am sure, excite anyone who has asked the question, 'What is reality?' This book may answer that question once and for all."
Author's Introduction to The Holographic Universe:
In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker's adventure begins when a beam of light shoots out of the robot Artoo Detoo and projects a miniature three-dimensional image of Princess Leia. Luke watches spellbound as the ghostly sculpture of light begs for someone named Obi-wan Kenobi to come to her assistance. The image is a hologram, a three-dimensional picture made with the aid of a laser, and the technological magic required to make such images is remarkable. But what is even more astounding is that some scientists are beginning to believe the universe itself is a kind of giant hologram, a splendidly detailed illusion no more or less real than the image of Princess Leia that starts Luke on his quest.
Put another way, there is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it -- from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons -- are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time.
The main architects of this astonishing idea are two of the world's most eminent thinkers: University of London physicist David Bohm, a protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists; and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and author of the classic neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain. Intriguingly, Bohm and Pribram arrived at their conclusions independently and while working from two very different directions. Bohm became convinced of the universe's holographic nature only after years of dissatisfaction with standard theories' inability to explain all of the phenomena encountered in quantum physics. Pribram became convinced because of the failure of standard theories of the brain to explain various neurophysiological puzzles.
However, after arriving at their views, Bohm and Pribram quickly realized the holographic model explained a number of other mysteries as well, including the apparent inability of any theory, no matter how comprehensive, ever to account for all the phenomena encountered in nature; the ability of individuals with- hearing in only one ear to determine the direction from which a sound originates; and our ability to recognize the face of someone we have not seen for many years even if that person has changed considerably in the interim.
But the most staggering thing about the holographic model was that it suddenly made sense of a wide range of phenomena so elusive they generally have been categorized outside the province of scientific understanding. These include telepathy, precognition, mystical feelings of oneness with the universe, and even psychokinesis, or the ability of the mind to move physical objects without anyone touching them.
Indeed, it quickly became apparent to the ever growing number of scientists who came to embrace the holographic model that it helped explain virtually all paranormal and mystical experiences, and in the last half-dozen years or so it has continued to galvanize researchers and shed light on an increasing number of previously inexplicable phenomena. For example:
In 1980 University of Connecticut psychologist Dr. Kenneth Ring proposed that near-death experiences could be explained by the holographic model. Ring, who is president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, believes such experiences, as well as death itself, are really nothing more than the shifting of a person's consciousness from one level of the hologram of reality to another.
In 1985 Dr. Stanislav Grof, chief of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published a book in which he concluded that existing neurophysiological models of the brain are inadequate and only a holographic model can explain such things as archetypal experiences, encounters with the collective unconscious, and other unusual phenomena experienced during altered states of consciousness.
At the 1987 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams held in Washington, D.C., physicist Fred Alan Wolf delivered a talk in which he asserted that the holographic model explains lucid dreams (unusually vivid dreams in which the dreamer realizes he or she is awake). Wolf believes such dreams are actually visits to parallel realities, and the holographic model will ultimately allow us to develop a "physics of consciousness" which will enable us to begin to explore more fully these other-dimensional levels of existence.
In his 1987 book entitled Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, Dr. F. David Peat, a physicist at Queen's University in Canada, asserted that synchronicities (coincidences that are so unusual and so psychologically meaningful they don't seem to be the result of chance alone) can be explained by the holographic model. Peat believes such coincidences are actually "flaws in the fabric of reality." They reveal that our thought processes are much more intimately connected to the physical world than has been hitherto suspected. These are only a few of the thought-provoking ideas that will be explored in this book. Many of these ideas are extremely controversial. Indeed, the holographic model itself is highly controversial and is by no means accepted by a majority of scientists. Nonetheless, and as we shall see, many important and impressive thinkers do support it and believe it may be the most accurate picture of reality we have to date.
The holographic model has also received some dramatic experimental support. In the field of neurophysiology numerous studies have corroborated Pribram's various predictions about the holographic nature of memory and perception. Similarly, in 1982 a landmark experiment performed by a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Optics, in Paris, demonstrated that the web of subatomic particles that compose our physical universe -- the very fabric of reality itself -- possesses what appears to be an undeniable "holographic" property. These findings will also be discussed in the book.
In addition to the experimental evidence, several other things add weight to the holographic hypothesis. Perhaps the most important considerations are the character and achievements of the two men who originated the idea. Early in their careers, and before the holographic model was even a glimmer in their thoughts, each amassed accomplishments that would inspire most researchers to spend the rest of their academic lives resting on their laurels. In the 1940s Pribram did pioneering work on the limbic system, a region of the brain involved in emotions and behavior. Bohm's work in plasma physics in the 1950s is also considered landmark.
But even more significantly, each has distinguished himself in another way. It is a way even the most accomplished men and women can seldom call their own, for it is measured not by mere intelligence or even talent. It is measured by courage, the tremendous resolve it takes to stand up for one's convictions even in the face of overwhelming opposition. While he was a graduate student, Bohm did doctoral work with Robert Oppenheimer. Later, in 1951, when Oppenheimer came under the perilous scrutiny of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities, Bohm was called to testify against him and refused. As a result he lost his job at Princeton and never again taught in the Umted States, moving first to Brazil and then to London.
Early in his career Pribram faced a similar test of mettle. In 1935 a Portuguese neurologist named Egas Moniz devised what he believed was the perfect treatment for mental illness. He discovered that by boring into an individual's skull with a surgical pick and severing the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain he could make the most troublesome patients docile. He called the procedure a prefrontal lobotomy, and by the 1940s it had become such a popular medical technique that Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize. In the 1950s the procedure's popularity continued and it became a tool, like the McCarthy hearings, to stamp out cultural undesirables. So accepted was its use for this purpose that the surgeon Walter Freeman, the most outspoken advocate for the procedure in the United States, wrote unashamedly that lobotomies "made good American citizens" out of society's misfits, "schizophrenics, homosexuals, and radicals."
During this time Pribram came on the medical scene. However unlike many of his peers, Pribram felt it was wrong to tamper so recklessly with the brain of another. So deep were his convictions that while working as a young neurosurgeon in Jacksonville, Florida, he opposed the accepted medical wisdom of the day and refused to allow any lobotomies to be performed in the ward he was overseeing. Later at Yale he maintained his controversial stance, and his then radical views very nearly lost him his job.
Bohm and Pribram's commitment to stand up for what they believe in, regardless of the consequences, is also evident in the holographic model. As we shall see, placing their not inconsiderable reputations behind such a controversial idea is not the easiest path either could have taken. Both their courage and the vision they have demonstrated in the past again add weight to the holographic idea.
One final piece of evidence in favor of the holographic model is the paranormal itself. This is no small point, for in the last several decades a remarkable body of evidence has accrued suggesting that our current understanding of reality, the solid and comforting sticks-and stones picture of the world we all learned about in high-school science class, is wrong. Because these findings cannot be explained by any of our standard scientific models, science has in the main ignored them. However, the volume of evidence has reached the point where this is no longer a tenable situation.
To give just one example, in 1987, physicist Robert G. Jahn and clinical psychologist Brenda J. Dunne, both at Princeton University, announced that after a decade of rigorous experimentation by their Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, they had accumulated unequivocal evidence that the mind can psychically interact with physical reality. More specifically, Jahn and Dunne found that through mental concentration alone, human beings are able to affect the way certain kinds of machines operate. This is an astounding finding and one that cannot be accounted for in terms of our standard picture of reality.
It can be explained by the holographic view, however. Conversely, because paranormal events cannot be accounted for by our current scientific understandings, they cry out for a new way of looking at the universe, a new scientific paradigm. In addition to showing how the holographic model can account for the paranormal, the book will also examine how mounting evidence in favor of the paranormal in turn actually seems to necessitate the existence of such a model.
The fact that the paranormal cannot be explained by our current scientific worldview is only one of the reasons it remains so controversial. Another is that psychic functioning is often very difficult to pin down in the lab, and this has caused many scientists to conclude it therefore does not exist. This apparent elusiveness will also be discussed in the book.
An even more important reason is that contrary to what many of us have come to believe, science is not prejudice-free. I first learned this a number of years ago when I asked a well-known physicist what he thought about a particular parapsychological experiment. The physicist (who had a reputation for being skeptical of the paranormal) looked at me and with great authority said the results revealed "no evidence of any psychic functioning whatsoever." I had not yet seen the results, but because I respected the physicist's intelligence and reputation, I accepted his judgment without question. Later when I examined the results for myself, I was stunned to discover the experiment had produced very striking evidence of psychic ability. I realized then that even well-known scientists can possess biases and blind spots.
Unfortunately this is a situation that occurs often in the investigation of the paranormal. In a recent article inAmerican Psychologist, Yale psychologist Irvin L. Child examined how a well-known series of ESP dream experiments conducted at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, had been treated by the scientific establishment. Despite the dramatic evidence supportive of ESP uncovered by the experimenters, Child found their work had been almost completely ignored by the scientific community. Even more distressing, in the handful of scientific publications that had bothered to comment on the experiments, he found the research had been so "severely distorted" its importance was completely obscured.
How is this possible? One reason is science is not always as objective as we would like to believe. We view scientists with a bit of awe, and when they tell us something we are convinced it must be true We forget they are only human and subject to the same religious, philosophical, and cultural prejudices as the rest of us. This is unfortunate for as this book will show, there is a great deal of evidence that the universe encompasses considerably more than our current worldview allows. But why is science so resistant to the paranormal in particular? This is a more difficult question. In commenting on the resistance he experienced to his own unorthodox views on health, Yale surgeon Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, author of the best-selling book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, asserts that it is because people are addicted to their beliefs. Siegel says this is why when you try to change someone's belief they act like an addict.
There seems to be a good deal of truth to Siegel's observation, which perhaps is why so many of civilization's greatest insights and advances have at first been greeted with such passionate denial. We are addicted to our beliefs and we do act like addicts when someone tries to wrest from us the powerful opium of our dogmas. And since Western science has devoted several centuries to not believing in the paranormal, it is not going to surrender its addiction lightly.
I am lucky. I have always known there was more to the world than is generally accepted. I grew up in a psychic family, and from an early age I experienced firsthand many of the phenomena that will be talked about in this book. Occasionally, and when it is relevant to the topic being discussed, I will relate a few of my own experiences. Although they can only be viewed as anecedotal evidence, for me they have provided the most compelling proof of all that we live in a universe we are only just beginning to fathom, and I include them because of the insight they offer.
Lastly, because the holographic concept is still very much an idea in the making and is a mosaic of many different points of view and pieces of evidence, some have argued that it should not be called a model or theory until these disparate points of view are integrated into a more unified whole. As a result, some researchers refer to the ideas as the holographic paradigm. Others prefer holographic analogy, holographic metaphor, and so on. In this book and for the sake of diversity I have employed all of these expressions, including holographic model and holographic theory, but do not mean to imply that the holographic idea has achieved the status of a model or theory in the strictest sense of these terms.
In this same vein it is important to note that although Bohm and Pribram are the originators of the holographic idea, they do not embrace all of the views and conclusions put forward in this book. Rather, this is a book that looks not only at Bohm and Pribram's theories, but at the ideas and conclusions of numerous researchers who have been influenced by the holographic model and who have interpreted it in their own sometimes controversial ways.
Throughout this book I also discuss various ideas from quantum physics, the branch of physics that studies subatomic particles (electrons, protons, and so on). Because I have written on this subject before, I am aware that some people are intimidated by the term quantum physics and are afraid they will not be able to understand its concepts. My experience has taught me that even those who do not know any mathematics are able to understand the kinds of ideas from physics that are touched upon in this book. You do not even need a background in science. All you need is an open mind if you happen to glance at a page and see a scientific term you do not know. I have kept such terms down to a minimum, and on those occasions when it was necessary to use one, I always explain it before continuing on with the text.
So don't be afraid. Once you have overcome your "fear of the water," I think you'll find swimming among quantum physics' strange and fascinating ideas much easier than you thought. I think you'll also find that pondering a few of these ideas might even change the way you look at the world. In fact, it is my hope that the ideas contained in the following chapters will change the way you look at the world. It is with this humble desire that I offer this book.
Copyright © 1991 by Michael Talbot Published by HarperPerennial/HarperCollins ISBN 0-06-092258-3
The Universe as a Hologram - Articles & Links
"The Holographic Universe"
By Michael Talbot
David Bohm
David Bohm was one of the world's greatest quantum mechanical physicists and philosophers and was deeply influenced by both J. Krishnamurti and Einstein.
Selected Publications:
"Quantum Theory," New York, 1951
"Causality and Change in Modern Physics," London, 1957
"The Special Theory of Relativity," New York 1966
"Wholeness and the Implicate Order," London, 1980
"Unfolding Meaning," (record of a dialogue with David Bohm), London, 1985
"Science, Order and Creativity," New York, 1987
"Thought as a System," London, 1994 See also
"The Energies of Love: In Honor of David Bohm," an article by Renee Weber in The Quest, Autumn, 1993.
"A Changing Worldview"
by Willis W. Harman
"Consciousness and the New Physics"
by Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD
The Self-Aware Universe
An Interview with Amit Goswami [Abridged] by Craig Hamilton - What is Enlightment?
The Universe is 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. 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 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". 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. 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 smellisin 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 unsolvedpuzzles in psychology. In particular, 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 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 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. 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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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 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". 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. 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 smellisin 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 unsolvedpuzzles in psychology. In particular, 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 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 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. 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".
Mental Relativity
Mass, Energy, Space, and Time: the four basic elements of the Universe. But how do we know they are there? We only know through observation. And what is observation? It is the mental awareness of things outside the mind. How can the mind be aware of things outside itself? By an interface through which the nature of the Universe actually affects the nature of the Mind. Conversely, how can the mind affect the Universe? Through an interface that allows manipulation of the Universe based on motivations of the mind.
We observe the Universe through our senses, we manipulate it through our bodies. If Universe and Mind are not the same, but are related, how do they compare? If we describe the Universe in terms of Mass, Energy, Space and Time, and see these things as the elements that create it, then the Mind is made up of the process equivalents of Knowledge Thought, Ability and Desire. Knowledge is the Mass of the Mind. But unlike Mass, Knowledge is a process, not a state. Knowledge is not a simple binary condition of being there or not, but contains a qualitative value that is determined by familiarity. The more one observes a condition, the more one is apt to believe in that condition. So there is a quality to Knowledge that, among other things, indicates to what degree the Mind will rely on it without question.
This Knowledge is much like the electron shells in Quantum Mechanics. As familiarity increases, the potential of Knowledge increases. This potential is the Energy of the Mind - the latent form of Thought. As with electron shells, the higher the level of potential, the greater the instability. As instability increases, the likelihood or frequency of spontaneous emission increases, as the electrons expel energy as they seek a more stable, less energized state. Similarly, as familiarity increases, the potential contained in Knowledge increases, instability increases, and the latent form of thought is spontaneously emitted as applied thought, with knowledge seeking a more stable, less energized state.
Observation is what charges Knowledge, spontaneous emission is what discharges it. Knowledge can only be maintained at a certain level if familiarity continues to charge it. But if Observation ceases, Knowledge will decay, much as if it had a half-life, with the higher, least stable levels discharging quickly, and the lower, more stable levels discharging progressively slower. At the lowest energy level with the greatest stability, Knowledge might last a lifetime.
When Knowledge decays, it releases Thought energy, which is then applied to other Knowledge as it flows through the system. Since this internal Thought is charged by Observation, it will initially reflect those Observations that are most familiar. Observations, however, are seldom single stimuli. Rather, most Observations are complex patterns of changing arrangement. As this occurs, many units of Knowledge are stimulated to differing degrees. And as new Observations are made of different events, one set of patterns may overlay another. The patterns that are most charged (and therefore most unstable) will be those that have input from multiple observations. So, as Knowledge beings to decay and generate Thought, the patterns of Thought need not reflect any single Observation, but likely will embody a synthesis born of many Observations. Due to the overlaying of varying degrees of Observation, as Knowledge continues to decay, the patterns of Thought will bear less and less resemblance to the initial Observation and become progressively more a "creative" synthesis unlike anything actually Observed.
Of course, Observation does not cease while internal Thought takes place. Rather, Knowledge is continuously being charged and decaying, altering its patterns based on the simultaneous effects of both Observation and spontaneous emission.
So far, we have described the Mass/Energy relationship of the Mind in terms of Knowledge/Thought. But what of Space and Time? In the Universe, Energy could only exist in a pure form if it were not applied. As soon as it affects Mass, Space and Time are generated. Similarly in the Mind, Thought patterns are pure only as long as they remain latent as the potential of Knowledge. But as soon as Knowledge decays and generates applied Thought, Ability and Desire are created.
Ability is the mental or "process" equivalent of Space. In the Mind, Ability is a measurement of the ratio of Observation to Thought. Another way of looking at Ability is as a determination of whether Knowledge overall is charging or discharging. When Knowledge is charging, the familiarity is less than the Observation. As such, the Observation is more unknown than known. This rates as a negative Ability for that area of Knowledge. If Knowledge is discharging, familiarity is greater than Observation and Ability is positive.
It is only the action of spontaneous emission that allows Knowledge to discharge even when Observing. This is so because Observation is seldom a steady input, but a changing pattern that charges a given area of Knowledge with a particular frequency as the Observation scans across or stimulates that area. When the frequency of stimulation is greater than the frequency of spontaneous emission, Knowledge will charge overall. When the frequency of stimulation is less than the frequency of spontaneous emission, Knowledge will discharge overall.
When a complex pattern of Observation effects a great number of Knowledge areas, a ratio is established between the number of areas that are charging vs. the number of areas that are discharging. This indicates the overall Ability in for a particular Observation.
Finally, Desire is the mental equivalent of Time. Desire measure how fast Knowledge is being charged or discharged. When Knowledge is charging quickly, Desire is strongly positive. When Knowledge is discharging quickly, Desire is strongly negative. When Knowledge is neither charging nor discharging due to a steady state equilibrium between Observation and spontaneous emission, Desire is null.
We can see that when there is zero Ability Desire will also be zero. Yet when Ability is negative, Desire can be strong, in either a positive or negative direction.
Knowledge and Thought, then, are steady state measurements of a binary exposure to Observation, and a Familiarity potential attached to that exposure. Ability and Desire indicate the direction and speed of change in Knowledge and Thought.
This explanation of the Mind describes the Mind observing the Universe. But what happens when the Mind observes the Mind. When we not only have Knowledge, but examine it, rate it, we must be able to stand away from ourselves and view the content of our own Minds.
Where are we to go in order to see our Minds at work without being in them? Well, of course, this can't be done. But in order to anticipate, a Mind must be able to sense the direction of its own functioning. This can only be synthesized, since we must be in our Mind even while observing it.
That neat trick is accomplished by scanning the elements of the mind from one position, then jumping to another position and measuring where we had been standing before. Although it does not give a complete view of the whole Mind at once, it does give a composite view of the mind in two steps.
At the most broadstroke connection between physiology and psychology, those two steps are accommodated by the two sides of the brain. The left side is spatially oriented and suited to measuring such things as Knowledge and Thought, which are states. The right side is temporally oriented and suited to measuring Ability and Desire.
We must keep foremost the concept that these measurements are happening simultaneously on both sides and it is only the synthesis of both views that can build the composite picture of our Minds. It is the ongoing process of continuous monitoring by both sides that synthesize to create that elusive condition we call self-awareness.
At the most detailed appreciation of the relationship between physiology and psychology, the spatial mind monitors the smallest unit that can contain both a binary Knowledge and a potential of Thought. The temporal mind monitors the smallest unit that can contain both a degree of Ability and an intensity of Desire. Self-awareness is made up of the synthesis of both the spatial and temporal Minds. The spatial mind sees the mind only as Knowledge and Thought. The temporal mind see the mind only as Ability and Desire. The spatial mind appreciates the mind's reason, the temporal mind appreciates the mind's emotion.
Because both K/T and A/D are needed to synthesize the composite understanding of the mind, the are joined in that single appreciation of self-awareness. K, T, A, and D, therefore constitute the smallest unit of self awareness. We call this unit a Thoton, due to its dynamic similarity to the properties of a photon of light.
The photon appears to have both particle and wave aspects. So does the Thoton. K and T are best understood in terms of particles, which is seeing them in a spatial view. But that only describes half the picture. A and D, the other half, are best described by waves, as they deal in frequencies. That is a temporal view.
Because self-awareness can be seen either spatially or temporally, sometimes it appears to be an arrangement of things, other times an order or sequence. Neither view in and of itself is complete. Each view will only serve as useful half the time, with the other view being required for all other cases. And since self-awareness is only an appreciation of something that cannot be seen in its entirety at one moment, no explanation of the overall functioning of the mind can be complete from either view alone.
So, talking about sides of the brain as being purely spatial or temporal, is only appropriate to some examples that rely on a spatial view, separating the brain into two areas. For other examples, it is better to see spatial and temporal as two functions which occur over the whole brain in a particular order, i.e.: first spatial, then temporal.
When we synthesize both views within ourselves we can ask, "Which area processes an Observation first?" This question incorporates both the spatial concept of areas and the temporal concept of order. When we answer this question either in terms of space or time, we can see that a filtering is taking place between the two aspects of self- awareness. Either an observation is filtered through one appreciation and the remainder (altered by the initial processing) is output to the other, or one appreciation examines the observation first (altering it in the process of observing it) and the other appreciation works with the complete, but altered observation after.
This alteration of data from an Observation, either in spatial terms of flow-through attrition or in temporal terms of imprinting, shows that impurities or inaccuracies will be manifest mostly in the spatial or temporal appreciations depending upon which gets the data first.
The question then arises as to which order the Mind uses. The answer is, "Both". Not both in the same mind, but that there are two kinds of minds: one where the spatial is more accurate, one where the temporal is more accurate. We call these the Spatial Brain Operating System (SBOS) for spatial and the Temporal Brain Operating system (TBOS) for temporal.
Note that SBOS and TBOS do not mean Left and Right Brain. The SBOS individual will process Observations first in terms of a spatial appreciation, followed by a temporal appreciation. The TBOS individual will process Observations first in terms of Temporal, then in terms of Spatial. Both minds use both appreciations. But each uses a different one first (from a temporal appreciation) or a different one more efficiently (from a spatial appreciation). This creates an overall difference in perception of observation between the two minds.
As this hardwiring determination is prerequisite to the development of self-awareness, it is determined in the early stages of prenatal development. Once cast, the hardwiring BOS cannot be altered as it is the very foundation and support of self-awareness. Experience, however can have a great effect on the manner in which one learns to consciously handle Observations and data, insofar as that the original BOS may be largely masked, or even appear to be of the other variety. Nevertheless, beneath the consciousness at the operating system level, the order of appreciation cannot be changed and is intrinsically SBOS or TBOS.
It is a contention of Mental Relativity that just as certain physical characteristics determine anatomical sex, the specific BOS of a mind determines mental sex, with SBOS being the systems almost exclusively found in men, and TBOS the system almost exclusively found in women.
Mental sex has little to do with sexual preference or masculine/feminine gender. But it does have a great deal to do with the perceptual differences between men and women.
Courtesy of Melanie Anne Phillips
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Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos
Free online access to the book
Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century
Change the world view
The Mega Foundation is a non-profit corporation established in 1999 to create and implement programs that aid in the development of severely gifted individuals and their ideas.
Freedom of intellectual inquiry and expression is one of the clearest benefits, and most urgent necessities, of modern democratic society.
Freedom of intellectual inquiry and expression is one of the clearest benefits, and most urgent necessities, of modern democratic society.
One requirement of intellectual freedom is that no institution or group of institutions be permitted to exercise too great a measure of control over intellectual commerce (in the traditional, non-entrepreneurial sense). This is because by their nature, institutions tend to enforce standards of ideological orthodoxy and intellectual conformity without being able to guarantee or establish with certainty that their ideas are correct or their standards justified.
To counter this trend, the Mega Foundation supports and develops a variety of projects that promote free intellectual expression and development.
To read more about the type of projects supported and developed by the Mega Foundation, visit the Programs and Projects page.
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To read more about the type of projects supported and developed by the Mega Foundation, visit the Programs and Projects page.
The Universe in a Nutshell
If you have ever wanted to know about the man who wrote the all-time best seller 'A Brief History of Time', and more recently the book that is still topping charts all over the world 'The Universe in a Nutshell' then this is an excellent place to start.
Highly recommend to visit Professor Stephen Hawking's website and lectures.
Read more...
The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe
A New Kind of Reality Theory
by Christopher Michael Langan, 2002
For more, see:
- Antropic principle
- Universe
- Intelligent design
- Theory of everything 1 and 2 (forum)
8 Keys to Maintain Balance During the Shift
"As consciousness shifts, there are certain requirements for those who choose to shift as well. Those requirements are of Universal Law, and cannot be denied. These necessities can be done only from the heart, for if from a mental nature will fail as untruth combative with perceived truth. As considered, these are also keys to the ascension process. They are not that which is new, but that which has always been. Only the perceptions of lack, of less than are new.
These keys are based upon the sacred geometry of the star tetrahedron, each key being a point of the star. Eight truths which are eternal. Each without the other is only part of the whole, just as you are part of all that is and has ever been."
These keys are based upon the sacred geometry of the star tetrahedron, each key being a point of the star. Eight truths which are eternal. Each without the other is only part of the whole, just as you are part of all that is and has ever been."
- We must acknowledgement our self perfection – We are and always have been of the One both in Source and within our Journeys.
- Accept the journey for which we have come – why fight the very things which we have come to learn?
- Maintain Personal integrity – That truth which is ours amongst all other things, that opportunity which we give ourselves to find the truth within us, not that which we have been conditioned by others to perceive.
- Be that which you are, not that which you perceive others would see – You are created of light, of Grace, and of that there cannot be imperfection, only that which is of Spirit. You do not need to improve yourselves, only to acknowledge that which is your God self, your perfect being.
- We must acknowledge our value – This is different than accepting perfection. Your value is how you fit within the world within and the exterior world in which you exist. To perceive that your value is greater than another’s, or less than someone else’s brings you to lack of everything else.
- Accept Your Power – You are great and mighty. True Power comes not of ego, but the collective One of our Spirit. True Power is Gentle Power. You are of the light and in its seemingly nebulous construct is the essence from which all things are made. To fear inner power is to suggest that you are less than all other things. In Truth, power is of Grace, not of abusiveness or negative use and your Grace is born of unconditionality. True Power is that which is Love, the intentional living as co-creator from within all opportunities that are offered you.
- Take Your value, Your perfection, Your power, Your Grace into your world – In the Now that always is, change only comes from practice of change. What this means is that to effect change we must embody it. You must walk your talk, not hide that which you know. Historically, that which is hidden is viewed as heresy in relation to the accepted norm. To change this, it is to create a new accepted norm with ease and Grace by virtue of your walking within the very light from which you are created.
- Love yourselves and touch everyone you encounter with love – As all energy exchanges, what will You accept from others and what will you leave behind? You can see all others as mirrors of yourselves, that their pain also resides somewhere within us, that their joy is in our hearts as well. This is why random acts of kindness make such a difference. How many times have you said “There by the Grace of God go I”? It is true. It has always been so.
And of course, as we embrace these keys, we must remember to breathe. Our breath serves more than the purpose of oxygenating our body. Our breath clears and nurtures us energetically. Each breath is a cleansing and as weare cleansed, our energy system moves more easily and with greater clarity of communication within the universal consciousness, communicating what our experience is as well as what our experience may be. When we do not breathe because we are tense, our energies compact, becoming more and more sluggish. As a result, our manifestation becomes sluggish or even stalled.
More on creation and reality
When I attach a value and a meaning to some event, I am creating a perception. In other words, it is my choice how to interpret what happened. I will usually interpret an event by seeing it through whatever issues or beliefs I already have going on inside of me. In other words, how I choose to see something, the perception I have of an event, is not necessarily what is happening, but how I choose to view it. If I have anger, I will likely interpret what someone says as sounding angry. If I clear myself of internal issues, I can choose to and will be able to interpret things from a higher vibrational state. Creating a perception creates how I see reality. I am responsible therefore, for how I create my reality.
Here is an example: as a small child, I see my father being angry. My perception of that event is that I am the reason he is angry - if I were a better child he wouldn't be angry. This perception then becomes a part of my life. I have a perception that I am a bad person, and therefore I always perceive that people are angry at me because I'm not good enough. This keeps me relating to others in fear.
As soon as I give up the role of being responsible for creating my own reality, as soon as I think someone is doing something to me, I have become a victim in my own belief. Others' responses to me are, in reality, only a reflection of my own energy, a reflection of whatever energy I am putting out, or have inside of me. In other words, if I have a perception that someone is a hurtful person, I must have a belief that I will be hurt because I deserve to be hurt. They, then, just play the role for me that I am expecting. I create what I believe.
When I come from the lower vibrational state, I will be viewing things as judgements. I will make judgements about myself or about another. The higher vibration is to see whatever happens as a mirror of myself in the Now: "I see you doing that. I want to judge you for it. Instead, I choose to see that it is a reflection of the energy I hold in myself. I realize that I do that also, or have done that, and have judged myself for it."
I ask myself, "Why am I still doing that? Where do I still hold that judgement (which I want to put out on you) about myself - where do I still think that I am not ok?" I identify the judgement I'm making about myself. I ask: "What part of me do I still not love and accept, and, therefore, judge?" Then I look at the other person and think: "I don't need to judge them. They are simply being a mirror of my own issue." I ask: "What in me created that in my reality?" In truth, all of us are really asking for love, which is what we all truly want and have forgotten that we already are.
Acceptance is the higher vibration of judgement. It is beyond forgiveness, because forgiveness implies that something has been done wrong. Whenever I look at it from being the Creator and not the victim, I see that acceptance says that all is happening perfectly, just as it is because whatever is happening enables us to grow. If I sincerely look at it as perfect just the way it is, I immediately move into the energy of Love, Trust, and Peace. Then there is no longer any judgement. It is at that point that I reclaim my power, and can then use my power to change the event if I choose to do so.
I know that if I feel anger, or any other unpleasant or uncomfortable emotion, I must carry that energy within me. It isn't because of what someone else did. The situation just reflected what was already there inside of me. Now I have the opportunity to see what the mirror is, to see what I carry within myself that I want to change so that I can heal, grow, and love. Therefore, seeing my reflection in another, or in a situation, is a positive and useful thing.
Lower vibration:expectationjudgement/blamerejectionapologizingpitytolerance
Higher vibration:non-attachmentobservationacceptanceseeing perfectionresponding from compassionallowance
FEAR
There are 3 universal fears:
(1) abandonment(2) not feeling worthy or good enough(3) loss of trust which = fear of surrender
Any time there is a fear, it will fall into one or more of these categories. Each of us is born with one of these three being our core lesson to master in this lifetime. All of our issues, no matter what they are and no matter how they came about, are related to, and can be traced back to, this core fear.
I will continue to create the same kind of situations, I will keep myself in judgement, I will reinforce the lower vibrational state of thinking that it's someone else's fault, and I will keep myself in the perception of being victimized until I resolve my own fear program and learn a new perception, a new way of thinking.
Fear is only a mask of my true desire.
Exercise to find out what my masked desire is and the erroneous belief causing my fear:
First, divide a standard size piece of writing paper into five columns. (Column headings are indicated by underlined items below.) In the first column I list all of my fears that I want to examine. In the second column I write what it is that I desire in relation to a particular fear. For example, in one column I may have written: "I fear that I will get cancer or some other life threatening disease." Then, in the other column, I write down what it is that I really want instead, "I desire perfect health." The masked desire, then, is usually the opposite of the fear.
Label the third column "Erroneous Beliefs." I then ask myself, "What must I believe in order to have created this fear?" I list all the beliefs that support my fear such as, "I believe that I can get sick. I believe that I am not strong enough to keep illness away. I believe that cancer and other life threatening diseases have more power than I do, etc."
The fourth column is where I list my Preferred Beliefs, which are always stated in the "I AM" format, i.e. "I AM healthy, I AM strong and resilient, I AM powerful."
Determining the Ultimate Truth about myself:
Finally, the fifth column is where I state the Truth about myself, my REAL self, my God self. "I AM Health, I AM Strength, I AM Resilience, I AM Power." This is where I claim my Godhood and acknowledge the Truth about me is that I AM everything. Not only am I powerful, I AM POWER itself. I can do this because I understand that this is a holographic universe and within each piece of any hologram is the pattern of the whole.
This exercise will help me to see what my erroneous beliefs are that keep me in fear, that create the difficulty I am in, that make me see my own issues in others and judge them for it, and that keep me from manifesting what I want.
TRUTH
ALL BELIEFS THAT CAUSE NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE ERRONEOUS. ALL ERRONEOUS BELIEFS ARE BASED IN FEAR. THEREFORE, ALL NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE ALSO BASED IN FEAR.
The number one addiction to an erroneous belief, what keeps me in it and seemingly unable to change it, comes from feeling guilt and shame. That's what makes me not want to see these issues as myself. In Reality, there is no shame or guilt. There is only growth and Love. When I face an issue in myself, I have the chance to become even clearer, ever more loving. And that is the perfection of the journey, of what I experience, of seeing myself in the mirror, and learning to love what I see.
The cycle of the judgement loop:
1. I think, or hear, a thought and respond with feeling guilty.
2. I project that guilt onto something or someone else; sometimes including myself, but usually others are my preferred target.
3. I feel guilty about doing that.
4. I respond with fear that I will be punished.
5. I feel shame and hide it away so I won't have to feel it. This is called denial.
6. In order to get away from the shame, or fool myself into believing I am dealing with it in some way, I blame others.
7. I feel guilty about doing that, and the loop goes on.
How to re-program an old belief:
1. Acknowledge: Own the fear or pattern.
2. Ask: "What keeps me believing in that fear? What will happen if I let go of it? What is the payoff for keeping it? (TRUTH: There always is one.) What do I get to do, or not do, if I keep the fear?" (TRUTH: A pattern/belief can never be changed as long as you really believe that changing is more fearful than keeping it.)
3. Decide if this pattern serves you anymore. Decide if you want to keep the program, or change it. If you decide to keep it, observe why, without judgement.
4. If you decide to change it, decide what you want to change it to. Be specific. You must decide on a new belief, a choice for a new perception. If you willingly choose to believe in a new reality, you can eliminate fear.
5. State your intention - what you intend to create instead. Say: "I intend _______." Your intention must include willingness to allow the change in your life.
6. Ask Spirit, your Highest Self, for guidance then release control of the manifestation of the intent to Spirit.
7. Trust.
Fears and erroneous beliefs have supported us, and we tend to want to hold onto them through our anger or other emotional reactions because it's the only way of life we've known. Fears can be survival tools, but will keep us locked in a lower vibration that doesn't help our life in a positive way.
Control Dramas:
These are energy-sucking ways of behaving, out of fear, that are motivated by a masked desire to control in order to avoid feeling fear. They are:
· Being aloof (quiet, non-responsive).
Being an interrogator ("Who did this?! Why did you....?! Didn't you realize that...?!" etc.).
Being an intimidator (one's energy makes others feel afraid - backing people down).
Being someone who creates confusion for others (gets them off center).
Being in victim consciousness ("Feel sorry for me because _______").
Insights:
If I find myself worried or fearful about what other people think of me, the mirror of that is: I am in judgement of myself, believing that I am not acceptable as I am.
If I am in fear, I am actually holding a belief that I am inadequate to deal with something.
A fear of judgement is actually a desire for unconditional love.
If I am in pain (physical or emotional), I am in resistance to something. One way I can identify that resistance is when I honestly ask myself, "What am I getting by holding onto my pain?"
If I am in pain, I am judging. I can, instead, move to acceptance. I can choose to see everything as perfect. I can ask, "What is the gift of the mirror for me here? What lesson am I wanting to teach myself through this experience?"
Change the perception that there was any damage done in a given situation. If I am the creator, then I created that situation for some reason, some higher purpose. What was the reason? There is no war happening, unless I create one by my perception.
If I am in resistance to something, I am trying to be in control and fearing a loss of power. It is a false belief that I can, or will, lose power, because:
When I identify with God, and know that I AM God, I AM POWER. God can never be disconnected from Power, and neither can I, although I can choose to believe that I can be disconnected.
When I create responding from Peace and living in higher vibrational states, I will then create a reality that will mirror that higher vibrational state.
The role of the ego:
It is the ego which allows us to be in this reality of duality. It is what holds the Illusion in place. The purpose of duality is to offer choice by comparison. It helps us decide what we want to experience in this lifetime in order to learn what we have come forth to learn so that we are able to accomplish our Purpose for being here.
The Higher Truth is larger than, bigger than, either side of duality. It is the point in the middle, the zero point, the neutral point where there is no attachment. It is the point of integration of duality.
Final Suggestions:
I must honour where someone is in their development, what lessons they have set up for themselves to master, even if I would choose to do it differently.
Using these principles will help me to allow others to express themselves, while I remain at peace.
HIGHER VIBRATION
- non-attachment
- observation
- acceptance
- seeing perfection
- responding from compassion
- allowance
- expectation
- judgement/blame
- rejection
- apologizing
- pity
- tolerance
Read more...
Release the power within
"Will you create a masterpiece or interpret life through the paintings of others?"
Tony Robbins
Unleash the Power Within
Get the Edge
Personal Power
I am that which I create
1. Prime Creator (God) is ALL THAT IS. Therefore, I am Prime Creator expressing Itself as me.
Since All That Is contains everything, I and everyone that is, has ever been, and ever will be, in all time, and in all parallel dimensions and realities must be contained within the All that is, Prime Creator, First Cause, God. This is the nature of existence.
2. I am not striving for perfection as I am already perfect. What I am striving for is to remember my perfection.
Since God is All that is, and the nature of God is perfection, then likewise, All must be perfection.
3. No one can create, or create in, my reality but me.
As an individualized aspect of God, I am endowed with the ability of creating my own unique experience of being God. That experience can only be unique if I am the only one creating in it. Because I am God, expressing Itself as me, I have no limitations on what I can create in my reality, including the illusion that someone else is doing the creating.
4. Nothing can be in my reality unless I create it.
Because no one can create in my reality but me, it is not possible for anything, nor anyone, to be in my reality unless I attract it there. I attract through my beliefs.
5. Everything in my reality is created by my beliefs.
As aspects of the All that is, Prime Creator God, I create my own personal reality as God creates, through thought. Everything begins with thought. Next, I have an emotional reaction to the thought. Thought + emotion creates beliefs from which perceptions, behaviours and patterns of response are formed. My perceived reality is thus constructed out of these personal belief systems. Nothing can be thrust upon me. I invite everything into my awareness through my thinking. It is my believing that makes it so.
6. As a Creator, I am 100% responsible for everything I create.
It is not possible for anyone, nor anything, other than me to be responsible for my experiences if I am the only one who can create in my reality.
7. Everything happens for a reason.
Since God is Absolute Perfection, then nothing that God creates is pointless nor extraneous. Therefore, as an individualized aspect of God, expressing Itself as me, the same applies to that which I create in my reality, whether or not I am consciously aware of it.
8. There are no accidents--Nothing happens by chance.
Since everything that is created has a reason and a purpose, then the concept of an accident must be an illusion designed to avoid taking responsibility for the creation.
9. I create 100% of the time. I have the power to choose whether I apply that 100% toward creating what I want or energizing what I don't want.
As an aspect of the Infinite Creator, I, too, am infinitely and constantly creating. How I choose to flow my thoughts and emotions determines what I attract into my world.
10. I am the only me there is. I am not divided into parts (conscious, subconscious, ego, etc.)
Since God is me, therefore, I am God. Since God Is One, therefore, I am One. If I am One, I cannot exist as One and also exist as parts. I can, however, choose to believe that I am in parts, and by that belief, create the illusion of being in parts. I acknowledge that I have created this particular illusion for the purpose of more easily understanding myself as God, and choose to continue speaking as if I am divided into parts until I fully understand myself as God.
11. All events are neutral. There are no negative experiences, although I can choose to define any experience as negative. Therefore, if I am experiencing negativity in my life, then I have chosen it.
Negative or positive definitions are a personal choice of a value judgement placed on any given situation or event, for the purpose of the experience. Since nothing can be in my reality unless I create it, then if it is there, and it is negative, then I have chosen for it to be there; and I have chosen to perceive it as negative. I always have another choice.
12. There is only one vibration--Love. Fear is the illusion of the absence, or lack of Love.
The vibratory frequency of God, is Unconditional Love. Everything, all that is, is created out of the essence of that unconditional love. The perception that there is an absence or lack of love in that which comprises everything, is an illusion based on an erroneous belief.
13. I cannot be in fear unless I believe that whatever I fear has more power than I do (refer to # 5).
Believing that anything/anyone else has more power than I do, IS the erroneous belief that causes all fear.
14. How l feel is a reaction to what I believe.
All emotions are responses to thoughts. Positive emotions are responses to thoughts based in God's Ultimate Truth. Negative emotions are responses to illusionary thoughts based in fear.
15. All dis-ease is caused by the denial of negativity within.
Since negativity is a perception based on a value judgement placed upon a neutral event or circumstance, it is essentially an erroneous belief out of which supporting false beliefs spring. Holding an erroneous belief system, especially in a suppressed or repressed form, creates an environment of internal discordance on a subconscious level. Over a period of time, denial of the judgement placed upon some aspect of oneself, and then suppressed, begins to alter the cellular structure of the area of the body where the memory of the event or circumstance is stored. This cellular alteration has been labelled disease. It is really emotional self-judgement.
16. There are no victims. There are only lessons.
If God is All that is, then there is only One of us here. Victim and victimizer are the same one idea. Whichever role I choose to be in any situation is mirroring to me the false beliefs I hold inside, for the purpose of uncovering them. Left unrevealed, and unacknowledged, my erroneous beliefs will attract to me their energy equivalent in physical form. To alter the manifested effect of my error thinking, I only need to change my perception and release all judgement, which is the Cause of my creation that is being mirrored to me. All apparent victim/victimizer situations offer me the opportunity to overcome judgement and learn about my Oneness.
17. I am the only Authority in my life.
If I am the only one who can create in my reality, then I must be the only Authority of it. However, in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for being that Authority, I can choose to falsely believe, that someone or something else has power over me.
18. Every person, place, or thing of which I become aware, is a mirror and has the potential to be a gift.
3D "reality" is a projection of the Mind of God and, therefore, an illusion. My personal version of this illusion, based on my perceptions, is projected from my personal mind and is mirrored back to me in everything I become aware of, for the purpose of knowing which emotions and judgements I hold inside, and for understanding what it is that I do believe.
19. At any given moment, I am either giving love, or asking for love.
Since I am an individualized aspect of God, my essence is Love. At any given moment, I am either in alignment with my True nature, or I have temporarily forgotten it.
20. I am that which I create.
God is in all things because God is all things. Therefore, God is what God creates. Creator and creation are One, the same one thing. As an individual aspect of God, I am a microcosm of Prime Creator God and, therefore, this also applies to me. I am that which I create. (See Mini-Lessons #3.)
21. There are no limitations.
If I have an experience that I define as a limitation, it is happening as a result of the way I think. The appearance of all limitation is merely an effect of error thinking. God has no limitations; and as an aspect of God, neither do I, unless I believe that I do. In which case I will create the appearance of limitation as a direct result of my belief. (See Mini-Lessons #5.)
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