On The Holographic Universe

Dear Daddy,


Thanks for your response. I enjoy the interaction. I do not pretend to understand these theories fully, so inevitably there will be questions that I cannot answer. But I will do my best. I only listened to a tape with some introduction to dissipative structures, and the tape was really about the Holographic Universe theory. However, I do know that Prikoshein's book (one of them at least) is called "On Being and Becoming" and he is something of a modern day mystic. Should be some interesting reading...I will have to put it on my list and get back to you on that. As far as the atomic bomb example goes, I feel certain that there must be a lot of restructuring that takes place during and after the explosion. After reading "The Tao of Physics" I can only vaguely imagine some of what the patterns of the restructuring energy must involve...you remember all the little interactions of the sub-subatomic particles. Perhaps the new more complex resulting structure is just out of the realm of our comprehension or accessibility. It is possible that he addresses that in the book...I don't know. Of course, then there would be the study of all the resulting shifts in energy and environment after an explosion, and I guess that might be revealing, though it certainly is a horrifying thought. I am not at all sure. I have a tendency to think that if I do not understand the analogies it is from a lack of my own ability to cognize more than an infallibility on the part of the theory and theorist. However, we realize that any model is just that... a model. That it will not totally "define" or "reveal" absolute truth is a given. There will always be a more comprehensive theory to follow it, and perhaps disprove it or encompass it. That is evolution of consciousness, and I suspect we will never reach the apex of that climb, eh?? Another possibility that I entertain when I'm not "getting the picture" is that I am being too microscopic or limited in my approach. For example, yes, civilizations have broken down and dissolved, yet something evolved out of them and went on, as you pointed out. Perhaps I need a more comprehensive/macrocosmic view of the "structure". Perhaps the structure that I thought I was considering is really just the perturbation?? It should have applications "across scale" though. It fractals...as does everything. However, the idea that energy moves to a higher, more subtle "pure level" (as you suggested about the atomic explosion) is one of the premises of the Holographic Universe theory.


David Bohm is the theorist on this one, but he says that he is not really proposing anything new...that it has all been said by the ancient wisdom of the mystics and the sages (sounds like Tao of Physics again). He just interprets it into the modern day language and format of physics. He was a renowned physicist and protegee of Einstien. He was killed several years ago in a car accident. I have enjoyed some tapes of dialogues between him and other scientists and some with Kristnamurti. (Kristnamurti is another one who talks about the "space between thoughts"...how do we do that indeed!) He and Kristnamurti are both big believers in dialogue as a great avenue of understanding. They say that the formulation and enunciation and reception of the thoughtforms for exchange helps to clarify and modify one's system of thought...isn't that the Socratic method of teaching? (I guess that's what we are doing here, eh?)


The basic idea that I have gotten so far from this theory is that each part is a reflection of the Whole, and that the whole may be found within each part. Sounds like we are back to the microcosmic/macrocosmic relationship, doesn't it? He says that the universe is like a hologram. So, in order to understand what that means, we need to have some idea of the components and structure of a hologram. I have read several explanations, and I do not pretend to understand this fully, but here is something of the idea.


One guy uses the analogy of a pizza pan full of water. You drop three pebbles into the water and you have the ability to freeze the water instantly so that the pattern of the ripples is frozen into the ice. The interaction of the ripple patterns creates information that can be reconstructed...there is a uniform behavior that gives you information about how the pebbles were dropped into the pan. Then you can take the ice out of the pan and break it into a bunch of pieces and each piece will contain enough information about the total picture to reconstruct it.


To construct a hologram you need two beams of light. (lasers) One beam will bounce off the object that you want as a hologram, and the other beam will shine directly onto the special photographic plate or film. The interference patterns of those two light sources will interact on the plate. They swirl around and do not look like anything in particular if you are looking at the plate. If, however, you shine a laser beam through the plate of film, the object will be reproduced in the 3-dimensional form of a hologram. And further more, if you tear the plate apart and shine the beam of light through any of the pieces, the whole object can be reproduced. So, in essence, it is all vibrations, and the "reading" of those vibrations by the light source. And each part contains the patterns for the whole picture.


So you have these "two levels of reality" in the universe. You have the object being portrayed... things that we see, what the materialists consider to be the only reality, or matter. This Bohm calls the explicate order. And you have the "patterns on the photographic film", or those patterns that appear nonsensical or are not readily visible but which contain the pictures. This underlying level of reality is a deeper order of existence, says Bohm... a vast, more primary level that gives birth to all the objects and appearances in the physical world just like the film gives birth to the hologram. This he calls the implicate order (or the order that is hidden). There is a constant enfolding/unfolding process going on between these two levels. Under the reality that we see and experience daily, there is a deeper reality that generates it.


On the quantum physics level (which was Bohm's field of work), do you remember the controversy about the particle/wave paradox? (sometimes it has the properties of a particle, and sometimes the properties of a wave...or you are looking at a particle, and then it disappears and starts acting like a wave, and then reappears again as a particle) Bohm says that the particle does not disappear but is just enfolded back into the deeper order from which it sprang, and then is unfolded again in the constant dance. He calls this enfolding/unfolding process holomovement.


Einstein said that space and time are not separate, but part of the space-time continuum. Bohm says that everything is part of a continuum. Ultimately even the implicate/explicate orders blend into one another and into one unbroken, enormous "thing" extending into the countless varieties of existence. Even the implicate order in all it's vastness is not the end of things, but there are other orders beyond it...infinite stages of further, more subtle development. We have "relatively independent subtotalities" which are the result of eddies and whirlpools of the inner reality.


Since every piece holds the whole picture, if we know how to access it, the entire cosmos lies within every cell. Life and intelligence are present in not only matter, but in space, time, energy, the fabric of the universe, and the holomovement. Every region of space is "awash" with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lengths. Each wave has some energy. Space is filled with light and electromagnetic waves that criss-cross and interfere with each other. All particles are waves, so all objects and everything else is composed of interference patterns.


Our brains mathematically reconstruct reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from the deeper order of existence that is beyond both time and space. The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe. Or, it could be expressed with the analogy that the brain is like the laser beam that shines through the film to interpret the patterns. As it turns out, you can preserve the interference patterns of more than one hologram on the same film by using various different angles of projection of the laser beams. Therefore, depending on the direction and frequency of the beam that you send through the film, a different hologram will appear. So consciousness literally becomes the co-creator of the reality portrayed depending upon its "angle of perception". That is totally in line with relativity theory.


So this does not mean that if I am looking at a tree, it is not really there. The tree is there on multidimensional levels. It just means that I am seeing a "cross-section" of the tree depending on the level of consciousness that I am tuned into. If the brain is a decoder of sorts, then it can be tuned to different states or frequencies of consciousness, and I will see different levels of "tree reality" depending upon which one I'm on. Therefore, mind contributes to the phenomenon of reality itself, not just to the knowledge of it. We can study the effects of the levels of consciousness and experiment with them thereby becoming more aware and "conscious" multidimensionally. Prayer and meditation are examples of avenues of that.


Consciousness itself is an example of undivided, flowing movement. The ebb and flow of it is not precisely definable, but it can be seen as a deeper, more fundamental reality out of which our thoughts and ideas unfold. Thoughts and ideas are like ripples, eddies and whirlpools...some will reoccur or persist in a more or less stable way while others vanish as fast as they appear. Some vortexes of thought can be extremely stable and even resistant to change. If someone challenges these thought patterns we may react like addicts and throw up all kinds of barriers of resistance, thereby blocking our potential for access to and interaction with the flowing whole.


I think the idea of "looking at the space between thoughts" is contained here. It has something to do with getting in touch with a level of reality that is beyond thought and the decoding process, and yet which encompasses it at the same time. It is beyond time and space and interpretation. It is the level of Oneness and Union with the Whole. It is beyond even the deciphering of what that means, and moves to the actual realization and experience of it. Either the Buddhists or the yoga sutras (I don't remember which...maybe both) talk about getting in touch with the detached observer...that perspective which is beyond the "emersion" in that which is being observed. It is a more comprehensive, objective perspective. We are one with the Source of it all and therefore have access if we will just tune in to the right frequency is one way of looking at it. Another way would be to go beyond the attempt of tuning at all...to that which is beyond tuning. The experience of it is completely discernible, as nebulous as it may sound, and one KNOWS when he has been touched by IT, even if that touch seems ever so brief. Krishnamurti says that as soon as we realize we are experiencing it we have a tendency to lose the awareness because we start thinking about how to hold on to it. As far as what one is looking for...I would have to say it is the purest, most reachable awareness of the presence of God, beyond the limitations of our thought-models of Him/It.


The implications are infinite here. I guess you can see why it took me so long to write this letter. There is much more, but that's enough for now.


Love Lisa
(July 5,1994)