One ancient Hindu legend says that at the beginning of all beginnings there was a single ocean of consciousness, which one day decided to split into countless particles in order to know itself. This is how the universe and the creatures inhabiting it appeared.
For millennia, this story was considered nothing more than fiction. But over the past century, discoveries in quantum physics have led to the concept of a holographic universe. And reality became … a shifting illusion.
The quantum realm
Even the philosophers of Ancient Greece postulated that all objects consist of the smallest indivisible particles - atoms. But in the 20th century, this paradigm was destroyed. Thanks to the latest electron microscopes, physicists have managed to discover the whole universe hidden from us.
It turned out that the atom consists of even smaller particles: protons, electrons, neutrons … Since then, the atom - a nucleus with electrons revolving around it - has become a symbol of science. All subatomic particles were called quanta, and the branch of physics that studies them was called quantum physics.
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Atom symbol
One of the founders of the quantum theory, who later received the Nobel Prize, Niels Bohr put forward the theory that quanta are actually not separate objects, but waves that take the form of particles only when they are directly observed! That is, if you look at a quantum, then it becomes a particle from a wave. And if you don't look at it anymore, then it turns into a wave again.
At first, this effect was considered fantastic. However, it was still possible to come up with ways to fix the wave state of a particle without observation from the outside. The credibility of the initial findings has been confirmed.
This discovery caused a real revolution in the minds. And no wonder! After all, since all matter and energy consists of elementary particles, it turns out that the Universe is nothing more than an illusion. Just imagine: your phone becomes material when you look at or interact with it, and the rest of the time is an obscure wave substance. And this situation develops not only with individual things, but also with the entire surrounding world. You are walking down the street, and there is simply no world behind you, because you are not watching it.
One of the main aspects of Bohr's theory was the impossibility of determining clear characteristics of particles, hence it followed that the entire quantum world is chaotic and defies interpretation. Despite the fact that most physicists supported Bohr, this idea was never fully studied and accepted, since it seemed too frightening and mysterious.
3D-Universe
But there was one physicist who not only continued research in the field of the illusory nature of the universe, but also created on its basis a much deeper and more comprehensive theory. His name was David Bohm. This scientist, unlike many, refused to accept the idea that the quantum world cannot be described and that there is no ordering or interconnection in it.
Early in his career, he studied plasma. Electrons, being in a plasma state, begin to behave as a collective and demonstrate the properties of a multicellular organism. Bohm discovered the same effect in the study of electrons in metals. Each particle coordinated its behavior with millions of others.
This prompted the scientist to think about the existence of a deeper reality at the sub-quantum level. He postulated a theory of quantum potential that permeates the entire cosmos. Everything, from electrons to galaxies, is a single superorganism, whose movements and actions are not random and occur with a specific purpose.
Of course, many scientists did not accept Bohm's views and argued that they were erroneous and anti-scientific. To prove his position and expand understanding of the nature of reality, Bohm began to study the deep hidden orders.
Gradually he realized that there are not one or two levels of order, but a great many. What appears to be chaos at one level is part of an orderly process at a higher level. For example, for a person caught in a storm, what is happening around him seems to be endless chaos and horror, but for a meteorologist who observes bad weather from a satellite, this is a quite common atmospheric phenomenon.
It turns out that our Universe is a three-dimensional projection, or a hologram of other levels of order. The hologram is very suitable for demonstrating the hidden order. To create a hologram, you need to split the laser beam into two separate ones. One ray will bounce off the object being photographed and connect with the second on the film, where a wave image will appear. In appearance, the resulting image seems to be a jumble of different circles and lines, but as soon as a concentrated beam of light is directed at it, a three-dimensional projection of the object appears.
An interesting feature of the hologram is its nonlocality. You can cut the resulting film into ten pieces, and each piece will contain the original image. The waveform on film is a collapsed hidden order that unfolds when projected.
Bohm called the invisible order im-plicative, hidden, and our visible - explicative, revealed. He argued that the Universe is the result of constant disclosure and collapse of invisible levels of being and is not just a static picture, but "hunger movement" - a complex, constantly changing stream of waves and particles.
Having given a physical basis for his theory, the scientist took up the philosophical side of the issue. He argued that there are no concepts of "we" and "they", external and internal, everything is one single "I". For example, imagine: you are sitting in a cafe, the table at which you are sitting, food, people, and the very room around you is yourself!
David Bohm did not see the difference between living and nonliving, intelligent and unreasonable, for him the cosmos was one indivisible single being. The scientist regretted that ignoring this knowledge by humanity only leads to even greater suffering and hatred, and dreamed of the day when each individual, looking in the mirror, will see his real self - an infinite and majestic entity.
Are you sure you exist?
But if the Universe is illusory, then you and I are even more illusory! Don't believe me? However, there is evidence of this.
Neurosurgeon Karl Pribram devoted his life to studying the brain, or rather, its ability to accumulate and store information. In the middle of the 20th century, the idea of the existence of special brain cells that are responsible for memory and are located in strictly defined places dominated. However, once Pribram got acquainted with the results of one experiment, where rats were taught different things, and then parts of the brain were removed one by one, trying to find out the location of the zone responsible for learning.
Most strikingly, even with most of the brain removed, the rats did not lose the skills they had learned.
This led Pribram to question the generally accepted attitudes. As with rats, he found the same effect in humans who had different parts of the brain removed. Despite the loss of a significant part of the brain, people still remembered who they were, where they lived, what they knew and were able to do.
For a long time Karl Pribram could not understand exactly how memory works, until he came across an article about a hologram. He was struck by lightning when he read that every piece of holographic film contains all the information. He finally found an explanation for the nonlocality of memory. In his works, he argued that the holographic principle lies at the heart of the work of brain neurons.
Then the scientist developed his theory. He stated that the brain deceives us, creating the illusion of external and internal. Basically, we see and feel with a brain that projects the whole world from the inside rather than receiving signals from the outside. In other words, we live in our own heads!
Inside projection
For many years, Pribram's theory was not taken seriously, but more recently, a discovery was made that produced the effect of an exploding bomb. Scientists from Brandeis University in the USA compared the system of neurons in the brain with the system of location of galactic superclusters in the Universe and simply lost their speech - they had an almost identical structure!
Today, holographic theory is developing rapidly. Physicists are using the Large Hadron Collider to search for the Higgs boson, the subquantum particle that is supposed to be the fabric of reality. Without a doubt, when humanity fully understands the principle of the structure of reality, it will become the greatest scientific and spiritual revolution in our entire history.