Very long but interesting article on science and maya

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends

 

This is a very long but interesting article that I encountered a long time

back. I thought maybe people would be interested. Jay, I will look forward

to your comments in particular on this.

 

Swami

 

The Universe as 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 otherdirected 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 smell is in 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 unsolved puzzles in psychology. In

particular, 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 prardigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences

like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has

pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic

illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces

consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of

the brain as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as

physical.

 

Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused

researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing

process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the

apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of

consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for

our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as

miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in

consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.

 

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may

work so well because in the holographic domain of thought images are

ultimately as real as " reality " .Even visions and experiences involving

" non-ordinary " reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In

his book " Gifts of Unknown Things, " biologist Lyall Watson discribes his

encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance,

was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air.

Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch

the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then " click " off again and on

again several times in succession.

 

Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such

events, experiences like this become more tenable if " hard " reality is only

a holographic projection.Perhaps we agree on what is " there " or " not there "

because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the

level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely

interconnected.If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the

holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson's

are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the

beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are no

limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.

 

What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it

any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the

power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda

during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our

birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the

reality we want when we are in our dreams.Indeed, even our most fundamental

notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as

Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based

on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or

meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality

would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events

would express some underlying symmetry.

 

Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science

or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen,but it is safe to say that it

has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if

it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation

for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth

between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a

physicist at Birbeck College in London,Aspect's findings " indicate that we

must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality " .

[Guest guest]

Swaminathan Venkataraman <nachiketas

ramakrishna <ramakrishna >

21 September 1999 15:41

[ramakrishna] Very long but interesting article on science and maya

 

 

> " Swaminathan Venkataraman " <nachiketas

>

>Dear Friends

>

>This is a very long but interesting article that I encountered a long time

>back. I thought maybe people would be interested. Jay, I will look forward

>to your comments in particular on this.

>

>Swami

>

>The Universe as 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.

 

 

<snip>

 

Response from Jay

 

Swami - you have opened up a whole new can of worms for this list.

 

If I remember it correctly David Bohm used to associate with J

Krishnamurthi. His approach to science was almost spiritual. He passed away

before he could develop his ideas to their final conclusions. His approach

has not been acceptable by the 'Scientific hierarchy'. People like Murray

Gell Mann of Santa Fe - have shown a distaste of anything that comes through

as Eastern metaphysical approach to science. The call it 'a new-age flaky

theory' and discard it.

 

There is the EPR (thought experiment) which culminated in the Aspect

experiment in Paris in 1981 which shows interconnectedness at speeds faster

than light. This would create serious problems for the law of causality. (In

fact it does not violate causality and yet shows a kind of deeper level of

connectedness).

 

One of the other theories which is considered to be at the cutting edge of s

cience at the moment is the theory of Chaos. The name Chaos gives the wrong

impression - it in fact develops the idea that there is a spontaneous

interconnectedness in all processes at infinitesimal levels. Again this is

similar to what Bohm observed in the behaviour of plasma.

 

The other scientists of repute who develop a kind of spiritual approach to

science is Roger Penrose (my ex professor) - you should read his ideas about

consciousness. Again his ideas are considered to be 'too flaky' by the

scientific hierarchy. He has written several books :- " Shadows of the mind "

" Emperor's new mind " etc.

Paul Davis is another scientist who has written many interesting books on

this theme.

 

My background is theoretical physics - I am working on some interesting

ideas based on the actual use of the concept of 'Maya in Science' - I do not

know if they will bear any fruit! But I feel certain that the next major

step forward in Physics will come about by the use and wholehearted

acceptance of Indian metaphysics of Sage Kapila.

 

regards

jay