Back in 1982, a wonderful event happened. A research team led by Elaine Aspect at the University of Paris presented what is arguably one of the most significant experiments in the 20th century. Aspect and his team found that under certain conditions, elementary particles, such as electrons, are able to instantly communicate with each other, regardless of the distance between them. It doesn't matter if there are 10 centimeters between them or 10 billion kilometers.
Somehow, each particle always knows what the other is doing. The problem with this discovery is that it violates Einstein's postulate about the maximum speed of propagation of interaction equal to the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking a time barrier, this daunting prospect has led some physicists to try to explain Aspect's experiments in complicated ways. But others have been inspired to offer more radical explanations.
For example, University of London physicist David Bohm believes that according to the discovery of the Aspect, reality does not exist, and that despite its apparent density, the universe is fundamentally fiction, a gigantic, luxuriously detailed hologram.
To understand why Bohm made such a startling conclusion, one must say about holograms. A hologram is a three-dimensional photograph taken with a laser. To make a hologram, first of all, the photographed object must be illuminated with laser light. Then the second laser beam, adding up with the reflected light from the object, gives an interference pattern that can be recorded on film (or other medium).
The shot looks like a meaningless alternation of light and dark lines. But as soon as the image is illuminated with another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the captured object immediately appears.
Three-dimensionality is not the only wonderful property of holograms. If the hologram is cut in half and illuminated with a laser, each half will contain the entire original image. If we continue to cut the hologram into smaller pieces, on each of them we will again find the image of the entire object as a whole. Unlike ordinary photography, each section of the hologram contains all the information about the subject.
The principle of the hologram "everything in every part" allows us to approach the issue of organization and orderliness in a fundamentally new way. For most of its history, Western science has evolved with the idea that the best way to understand a phenomenon, be it a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its constituent parts. The hologram showed us that some things in the universe cannot afford it. If we dissect something that is holographically arranged, we will not get the parts that make it up, but we will get the same thing, but in a smaller size.
These ideas inspired Bochm to reinterpret Aspect's work. Bohm is sure that elementary particles interact at any distance, not because they exchange mysterious signals among themselves, but because their separation is an illusion. He explains that at some deeper level of reality, such particles are not separate objects, but in fact the continuation of something more fundamental.
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To clarify this better, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine a fish tank. Imagine also that you cannot see the aquarium directly, but you can only watch two television screens, which transmit images from cameras located one in front and the other on the side of the aquarium. Looking at the screens, you can conclude that the fish on each screen are separate objects. But as you continue to observe, after a while you will find that there is a relationship between the two fish on different screens.
When one fish changes, the other also changes, slightly, but always according to the first; when you see one fish "in the face", the other certainly "in profile". If you do not know that this is the same aquarium, you would rather conclude that the fish must somehow instantly communicate with each other than that this is an accident. The same, Bohm claims, can be extrapolated to elementary particles in Aspect's experiment.
According to Bohm, the apparent superluminal interaction between particles tells us that there is a deeper level of reality hidden from us, of a higher dimension than ours, similar to an aquarium. And, he adds, we see the particles as separate because we see only part of reality. Particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper unity that is ultimately holographic and invisible like an object captured on a hologram. And since everything in physical reality is contained in this "phantom", the universe itself is a projection, a hologram.
In addition to its "phantom" nature, such a universe may have other amazing properties. If the separation of particles is an illusion, then on a deeper level all objects in the world are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in the carbon atoms in our brains are linked to the electrons of every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shines in the sky.
Everything interpenetrates with everything, and although human nature tends to separate, dismember, put on shelves, all natural phenomena, all divisions are artificial and nature is ultimately an endless web. In the holographic world, even time and space cannot be taken as a basis. Because a characteristic such as position is meaningless in a universe where nothing is separate from each other; time and three-dimensional space are like images of fish on screens, which should be considered projections.
From this point of view, reality is a superhologram in which the past, present and future exist simultaneously. This means that with the help of the appropriate tools, one can penetrate deep into this super-hologram and see pictures of the distant past.
What else can a hologram carry in itself is still unknown. For example, you can imagine that a hologram is a matrix that gives rise to everything in the world, at least there are any elementary particles that exist or can exist - any form of matter and energy is possible, from a snowflake to a quasar, from a blue whale to gamma rays. It is like a universal supermarket that has everything.
Although Bohm admits that we have no way of knowing what else the hologram has in it, he takes the liberty of arguing that we have no reason to suppose that there is nothing else in it. In other words, it is possible that the holographic level of the world is the next step of endless evolution.
Bohm is not alone in his opinion. Stanford University independent neuroscientist Karl Pribram, who works in brain research, also leans towards the holographic theory of the world. Pribram came to this conclusion while pondering the riddle of where and how memories are stored in the brain. Numerous experiments have shown that information is not stored in any specific part of the brain, but is dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of crucial experiments in the 1920s, Karl Lashley showed that no matter which part of the rat's brain he removed, he could not achieve the disappearance of conditioned reflexes developed in the rat before the operation. Nobody has been able to explain the mechanism that corresponds to this property of memory "everything in every part".
Later, in the 60s of the XX century, Pribram faced the principle of holography and realized that he had found the explanation that neurophysiologists were looking for. Pribram is confident that memory is not contained in neurons or in groups of neurons, but in a series of nerve impulses circulating throughout the brain, just as a piece of a hologram contains the entire image. In other words, Pribram is convinced that the brain is a hologram.
Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in such a small volume. It is assumed that the human brain is able to memorize about 10 billion bits (or roughly 1250 Gigabytes) in a lifetime.
It was discovered that another striking feature was added to the properties of holograms - the enormous recording density. By simply changing the angle at which the lasers illuminate the film, many different images can be recorded on the same surface. It has been shown that one cubic centimeter of film can store up to 10 billion bits of information.
Our supernatural ability to quickly find the necessary information from a huge volume becomes more understandable if we accept that the brain works on the principle of a hologram. If a friend asks you what came to your mind when the word “zebra” came to mind, you don't have to go over your entire vocabulary to find the answer. Associations like "striped", "horse" and "lives in Africa" appear in your head instantly.
Indeed, one of the most amazing properties of human thinking is that every piece of information is instantly inter-correlated with every other - another property of the hologram. Since any part of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with any other, it is quite possible that the brain is the supreme example of cross-correlated systems exhibited by nature.
Memory location is not the only neurophysiological mystery that has been interpreted in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate such an avalanche of frequencies that it perceives by various senses (frequencies of light, sound frequencies, and so on) into our concrete idea of the world. Frequency encoding and decoding is exactly what the hologram does best. Just as a hologram serves as a kind of lens, a transmission device capable of converting a meaningless set of frequencies into a coherent image, so the brain, according to Pribram, contains such a lens and uses the principles of holography to mathematically process frequencies from the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. …
A lot of evidence suggests that the brain uses the principle of holography to function. Pribram's theory is finding more and more supporters among neurophysiologists.
Argentine-Italian researcher Hugo Zazzarelli recently extended the holographic model to the field of acoustic phenomena. Perplexed by the fact that humans can determine the direction of a sound source without turning their heads, even if only one ear is working, Zazzarelli found that the principles of holography could explain this ability as well. He also developed holophonic sound recording technology capable of reproducing soundscapes with stunning realism.
Pribram's idea that our brains create "hard" reality by relying on input frequencies has also received brilliant experimental confirmation. It has been found that any of our senses has a much wider frequency response than previously thought. For example, researchers have found that our organs of vision are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is somewhat dependent on what is now called osmic frequencies, and that even our cells are sensitive to a wide range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that this is the work of the holographic part of our consciousness, which transforms separate chaotic frequencies into continuous perception.
But the most striking aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain comes to light when compared with Bochm's theory. If what we see is only a reflection of what is actually “there” is a set of holographic frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies and mathematically transforms them into perceptions, what is objective reality ?
Let's just say it doesn't exist. As the Eastern religions have been claiming from time immemorial, matter is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think that we are physical and move in the physical world, this is also an illusion. In fact, we are “receivers” floating in a kaleidoscopic sea of frequencies, and everything that we extract from this sea and turn into physical reality is just one source out of many extracted from the hologram.
This striking new picture of reality, a synthesis of the views of Bochm and Pribram, has been called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists were skeptical about it, others were encouraged by it. A small but growing group of researchers believe that this is one of the most accurate models of the world so far proposed. Moreover, some hope that it will help solve some of the mysteries that have not been previously explained by science and even consider the paranormal as part of nature. Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, conclude that many parapsychological phenomena are becoming more understandable within the holographic paradigm.
In a universe in which the individual brain is actually an indivisible part of a large hologram and is infinitely connected to others, telepathy may simply be attainment of the holographic level. It becomes much easier to understand how information can be delivered from consciousness "A" to consciousness "B" at any distance, and to explain many mysteries of psychology. In particular, Grof foresees that the holographic paradigm will be able to offer a model for explaining many of the mysterious phenomena observed by humans during an altered state of consciousness.
In the 1950s, while researching LSD as a psychotherapeutic drug, Grof had a female patient who suddenly became convinced that she was a female prehistoric reptile. During the hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it was like to be a creature with such forms, but also noted colored scales on the head of a male of the same species. Grof was amazed at the fact that in a conversation with a zoologist, the presence of colored scales on the head of reptiles, which plays an important role in mating games, was confirmed, although the woman had no idea about such subtleties before.
This woman's experience was not unique. During his research, he encountered patients returning up the evolutionary ladder and identifying themselves with a variety of species (on their basis, the scene of the transformation of a man into an ape in the movie Altered States is built). Moreover, he found that such descriptions often contain zoological details that, when checked, are accurate.
The return to animals is not the only phenomenon Grof described. He also had patients who seemed to be able to tap into some sort of area of the collective or racial unconscious. Uneducated or uneducated people suddenly gave detailed descriptions of burials in Zoroastrian practice or scenes from Hindu mythology. In other experiments, people gave convincing descriptions of out-of-body travel, predictions of pictures of the future, past incarnations.
In later research, Grof found that the same range of phenomena manifested itself in therapy sessions that did not involve the use of drugs. Since a common element of such experiments was the expansion of consciousness beyond the boundaries of space and time, Grof called such manifestations "transpersonal experience", and at the end of the 60s of the XX century, thanks to him, a new branch of psychology called "transpersonal" psychology appeared, devoted entirely to this area …
Although the newly formed Association for Transpersonal Psychology was a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and became a respected branch of psychology, neither Grof himself nor his colleagues could offer a mechanism to explain the strange psychological phenomena they observed. But that changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm.
As Grof noted, if consciousness is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth, connected not only to every other consciousness that exists or existed, but also to every atom, organism and an immense region of space and time, the fact that tunnels can accidentally form in the labyrinth and having transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.
The holographic paradigm also leaves its mark on the so-called exact sciences, such as biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Intermont College in Virginia, pointed out that if reality is just a holographic illusion, then it can no longer be argued that consciousness is a function of the brain. Rather, on the contrary, consciousness creates the brain - just as we interpret the body and our entire environment as physical.
This reversal of our views on biological structures allowed researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process may also change under the influence of the holographic paradigm. If the physical body is nothing more than a holographic projection of our consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is more responsible for our health than the advances in medicine allow. What we are now seeing as a seeming cure for a disease can in fact be done by changing consciousness, which will make the appropriate adjustments to the hologram of the body.
Likewise, alternative therapies such as visualization can work successfully because the holographic essence of imagery is ultimately as real as "reality."
Even the revelations and experiences of the otherworldly become explicable in terms of the new paradigm. Biologist Liel Watson in his book "Gifts of the Unknown" describes a meeting with an Indonesian woman-shaman, who, performing a ritual dance, was able to make a whole grove of trees disappear instantly into the subtle world. Watson writes that while he and another surprised witness continued to watch her, she caused the trees to disappear and reappear several times in a row.
Modern science is unable to explain such phenomena. But they become quite logical if we assume that our "dense" reality is nothing more than a holographic projection. Perhaps we can formulate the concepts of "here" and "there" more precisely if we define them at the level of the human unconscious, in which all consciousnesses are infinitely closely interconnected.
If so, then, overall, this is the most significant consequence of the holographic paradigm, meaning that the phenomena observed by Watson are not publicly available just because our minds are not programmed to trust them to make them so. In the holographic universe, there is no scope for changing the fabric of reality.
What we call reality is just a canvas waiting for us to draw on it any picture we wish. Everything is possible, from bending spoons with an effort of will, to phantasmagoric scenes in the spirit of Castaneda in his studies with Don Juan, for the magic that we own initially, no more and no less apparent than our ability to create any worlds in our fantasies.
Indeed, even most of our "fundamental" knowledge is dubious, while in the holographic reality that Pribram points out, even random events could be explained and defined using holographic principles. Coincidence and coincidence suddenly take on meaning, and anything can be seen as a metaphor, even a chain of random events expresses some kind of deep symmetry.
The holographic paradigm of Bochm and Pribram, whether it gets further development or disappears into oblivion, one way or another it can be argued that it has already gained popularity among many scientists. Even if the holographic model was found to be unsatisfactory for the instantaneous interaction of elementary particles, at least as pointed out by the physicist of Bairback College in London, Basil Healey, Aspect's discovery "showed that we must be prepared to consider radically new approaches to understanding reality."
V. Romanchenko