Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Michael Talbot's (non-fiction) books include Mysticism And The New Physics, Beyond The Quantum, and (arguably his most notable work) The Holographic Universe. In The Holographic Universe, Talbot made many references to the work of David Bohm and Karl H. Pribram, and it is quite apparent, that the combined work of Bohm and Pribram is largely the cornerstone, upon which Talbot built his ideas. Michael Talbot attempted to use the holographic perspective to explain paranormal activity and extrasensory perception. Talbot also ties in elements of Carl Jung's "collective unconscious" theory, as well, as the synchronicity phenomenon, to suggest the existence of an underlying Unified Field (M-Field), that ties all things in the Universe together. Talbot also often referenced Stanislav Grof, whose work on Holotropic Breathwork was also of obvious influence. It is said, that Talbot has made the often esoteric concepts of Bohm, Pribram, et al, accessible to the general public. This may be in some part due to his earlier work as a science fiction author. Talbot attempted to incorporate psychology, religion, anthropology, spirituality and science to shed light on truly profound questions, that we have struggled with since the genesis of humanity.
After reading "Holographic Universe" twice I must add: most of us have less vivid memories, because we don't have enough personal energy, left in us to remember our memories and our dreams. Sorcerers restore all their memories to perfection by doing RECAPITULATION for many years, it means returning their lost energies and getting rid of unwanted emotions and memories! Carlos Castaneda and Taisha Abelar describe this method in their books and I posted some extracts about this technique on our website! By the way, Don Juan's team of Sorcerers were All Experts on Practical Use of Holography! Below are some important points from this book by Michael Talbot :

"...Creating the illusion, that things are located, where they are not, is the quintessential (pure, highly concentrated essence of something) feature of a Hologram...
if you look at a Hologram, it seems to have extension in Space, but if you pass your hand through it, you will discover: there is nothing there. Despite what your senses tell you, no instrument will pick up the presence of any abnormal energy or substance, where the Hologram appears to be hovering. This is because a Hologram is a Virtual Image, an image, that appears to be where it is not, and possesses no more extension in Space, than does the three-dimensional image you see of yourself, when you look in a mirror. Just as the image in the mirror is located in the silvering on the mirror's back surface, the actual location of a Hologram is always in the photographic emulsion on the surface of the film, recording it...the visual cortex (outer layer or cerebrum, kidneys, adrenal gland) was responding not to patterns, but to the frequencies of various waveforms, he began to reassess the role frequency played in the other senses...the ear was a frequency analyzer...our sense of smell seems to be based on, what are called osmic frequencies...our skin is sensitive to frequencies of vibration...taste may involve frequency analysis...our physical movements may be encoded in our brains in a language of Fourier wave forms...
Pribram realized, that if the Holographic Brain Model was taken to its logical conclusions, it opened the door on the possibility, that objective Reality (of Objects)—
the World of coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps—might not even exist, or at least not exist in the way, we believe, it exists. Was it possible,
he wondered, that what the mystics had been saying for centuries, was true, reality was maya, an illusion, and what was out there was really a vast, resonating symphony of waveforms, a "frequency domain", that was transformed into the World, as we know it, only after it entered our senses? Realizing, that the solution,
he was seeking, might lie outside his own field, he went to his physicist son for advice. His son recommended he look into the work of a physicist named David Bohm. When Pribram did, he was electrified. He not only found the answer to his question, but also discovered, that according to Bohm, the Entire Universe was a Hologram
...The path, that led Bohm to the conviction, that the Universe is structured like a Hologram, began at the very edge of matter, in the world of subatomic particles...
Although an electron can sometimes behave, as if it were a compact little particle, physicists have found, that it literally possesses no dimension. This is difficult for most of us to imagine, because everything at our own level of existence possesses dimension. And yet, if you try to measure the width of an electron, you will
discover it's an impossible task. An electron is simply not an object, as we know it.
Another discovery physicists made is, that an electron can manifest as either a Particle or a Wave! If you shoot an electron at the screen of a television, that's been turned off, a tiny point of light will appear when it strikes the phosphorescent chemicals, that coat the glass. The single point of impact the electron leaves on the screen clearly reveals the Particle-like side of its nature. But this is not the only form the electron can assume. It can also dissolve into a blurry cloud of energy and behave, as if it were a Wave, spread out over Space. When an electron manifests as a Wave it can do things no Particle can. If it is fired at a barrier, in which two slits have been cut, it can go through both slits simultaneously. When wavelike electrons collide with each other, they even create Interference Patterns. The electron, like some shape-shifter out of folklore, can manifest as either a Particle or a Wave. This chameleon-like ability is common to all subatomic particles. It is also common to all things, once thought to manifest exclusively as Waves. Light, Gamma Rays, Radio Waves, X Rays—all can change from Waves to Particles and back again. Today physicists believe, that Subatomic Phenomena should not be classified solely as either Waves or Particles, but as a single category of somethings, that are always somehow both. These somethings are called Quanta, and physicists believe they are the basic stuff, from which the Entire Universe is made. Recall Bohm's assertion, that there is no such thing as disorder, only orders of indefinitely high degree!

Contents. Introduction

PART 1: A REMARKABLE NEW VIEW OF REALITY
1 The Brain as Hologram 11
2 The Cosmos as Hologram 32

PART II: MIND AND BODY
3 The Holographic Model and Psychology 59
4 I Sing the Body Holographic 82
5 A Pocketful of Miracles 119
6 Seeing Holographically 162

PART III: SPACE AND TIME
7 Time Out of Mind 197
8 Traveling in the Superhologram 229
9 Return to the Dreamtime 286

Introduction

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, ... 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. 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 (frequency) 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 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 thoughts: 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 alent (?). 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 United 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 (increased) 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 (determinate, certain) 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 (standard). 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 in American 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", that 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 (understand), 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 (Paradigm - any example or model, used as a standard). 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.

PART 1 - A REMARKABLE NEW VIEW OF REALITY - The Brain as Hologram

11
"It isn't, that the World of appearances is wrong; it isn't, that there aren't objects out there, at one level of reality. It's, that if you penetrate through and look at the Universe with a Holographic System, you arrive at a different view, a different Reality. And that Other Reality can explain things, that have hitherto remained inexplicable scientifically: paranormal phenomena, synchronicities, the apparently meaningful coincidence of events."
Karl Pribram, interview in Psychology Today. "Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly, wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." T. H. Huxley.

The puzzle, that first started Pribram on the road to formulating his Holographic Model, was the question of, how and where memories are stored in the brain. In the early 1940s, when he first became interested in this mystery, it was generally believed, that memories were localized in the brain. Each memory a person had, such as the memory of the last time you saw your grandmother, or the memory of the fragrance of a gardenia you sniffed, when you were sixteen, was believed to have a specific location somewhere in the brain cells. Such memory traces were called engrams, and although noone knew, what an engram was made of — whether it was a neuron or perhaps even a special kind of molecule — most scientists were confident: it was only a matter of time, before one would be found. There were reasons for this confidence.
12-13
Research conducted by Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in the 1920s had offered convincing evidence, that specific memories did have specific locations in the brain. One of the most unusual features of the brain is, that the object (the brain) itself doesn't sense pain directly. As long, as the scalp and skull have been deadened with a local anesthetic, surgery can be performed on the brain of a fully conscious person without causing any pain. In a series of landmark experiments, Penfield used this fact to his advantage. While operating on the brains of epileptics, he would electrically stimulate various areas of their brain cells. To his amazement he found, that when he stimulated the temporal lobes (the region of the brain behind the temples) of one of his fully conscious patients, they reexperienced memories of past episodes from their lives in vivid detail. One man suddenly relived a conversation, he had with friends in South Africa; a boy heard his mother talking on the telephone and, after several touches from Penfield's electrode, was able to repeat her entire conversation; a woman found herself in her kitchen and could hear her son playing outside. Even when Penfield tried to mislead his patients, by telling them, he was stimulating a different area, when he was not, he found, that when
he touched the same spot, it always evoked the same memory.
In his book "The Mystery of the Mind", published in 1975, just shortly before his death, he wrote: "It was evident at once, that these were not dreams. They were electrical activations of the sequential record of consciousness, a record, that had been laid down during the patient's earlier experience. The patient 're-lived' all, that he had been aware of in that earlier period of time, as in a moving-picture 'flashback"!
From his research Penfield concluded, that everything, we have ever experienced, is recorded in our brain, from every stranger's face, we have glanced at in a crowd, to every spider web, we gazed at as a child. He reasoned, that this was why memories of so many insignificant events kept cropping up in his sampling. If our memory is a complete record of even the most mundane of our day-to-day experiences, it is reasonable to assume, that dipping randomly into such a massive chronicle would produce a good deal of trifling information.

Wrong! Everything is recorded not in the brain, but in various places of our Point of Perception or Assamblage Point (the brightest point) in our Luminous Ball !

As a young neurosurgery resident, Pribram had no reason to doubt Penfield's engram theory. But then something happened, that was to change his thinking forever.
In 1946 he went to work with the great neuropsychologist Karl Lashley at the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology, then in Orange Park, Florida. For over thirty years Lashley had been involved in his own ongoing search for the elusive mechanisms responsible for memory, and there Pribram was able to witness the fruits of Lashley's labors firsthand. What was startling was, that not only had Lashley failed to produce any evidence of the engram, but his research actually seemed to pull the rug out from under all of Penfield's findings. What Lashley had done was to train rats to perform a variety of tasks, such as run a maze. Then he surgically removed various portions of their brains and retested them. His aim was literally to cut out the area of the rats' brains, containing the memory of their maze-running ability.
To his surprise he found, that no matter what portion of their brains he cut out, he could not eradicate their memories. Often the rats' motor skills were impaired and they stumbled clumsily through the mazes, but even with massive portions of their brains removed, their memories remained stubbornly intact. For Pribram these were incredible findings. If memories possessed specific locations in the brain in the same way, that books possess specific locations on library shelves, why didn't Lashley's surgical plunderings have any effect on them? For Pribram the only answer seemed to be, that memories were not localized at specific brain sites, but were somehow spread out or distributed throughout the brain, as a whole. The problem was, that he knew of no mechanism or process, that could account for such a state of affairs. Lashley was even less certain and later wrote, "I sometimes feel, in reviewing the evidence on the localization of the memory trace, that the necessary conclusion is, that learning just is not possible at all. Nevertheless, in spite of such evidence against it, learning does sometimes occur."

If we start considering holographically the Sun, existing in the ceiling of my room (and do not consider it lineally, as we used to), then it is all make sense !
Everything in the Universe is made of White wavelike Sun Energy, which we, in our physical world, call electrons. Sun Energy is also represented in
particles-electrons (they jump up and down on the same spot, we call them boiling AC-DC) and our Inorganic Beings-Relatives' Twin World is based on these particles-electrons of Sun energy.
Everything in the Universe is made out of White Sun Energy of Balance. Our Original World is based on a wave form, moving along, but still Sun energy. The Energy, represented in particle form exists in our Twin-World ! And now both Worlds are merging together! When wave-electrons collide with each other, they create particles-electrons, which can do things, that waves-electrones can't do. Our TV or Computer screens are based on these particles-electrons of Red-Blue-Green colours.
Particles-electrons have an ability to magnetise everything. Inorganic Beings, means our 'Relatives' in our Twin World have this ability to magnitise themselves in our Everyday World and also magnitise people/animals/Earth's crust etc. When they magnitise themselves together in one bunch, they are unbeatable (according to Carlos Castaneda). In order to mix with our wavy Everyday World, Inorganic Beings have to electrically charge with their people/animals/water/soil with their boiling energy.
Magnetic Belts around Earth, magnetic ore and numerous bunches of stone columns of Inorganic Beings everywhere in/on the surface of our Planet are made from particles-electrons, glued to each other (below is one of many pictures of stone columns of Inorganic Beings on the surface of every country).
What also is interesting, that both: particles-electrons and waves-electrones can have the same ability to change into their opposites. Particles-electrons can become waves-electrones and waves-electrones can become particles-electrons. In this case they would be called Quanta. Physicists found that
"Light, Gamma Rays, Radio Waves, X Rays—all can change from Waves to Particles and back again...they should not be classified solely as either Waves or Particles, but always both." When a person drinks a lot of alcohol, he or she can have a double vision, means everything in front of their eyes would be in two's: a person/a landscape/an animal/
a building etc. Or if you cross your eyes and look at some tree or some person, you will see a double image of that tree/person. Only that other person or tree is not physical ! This way Seers-Sorcerers deliberatory and permanently separate our two Worlds for their purposes (without ill effect for their eyes or their eye-sight). That proves the existence of our Twin-World and also of our non physical twin-person in that Twin-World. These two Worlds (ours and theirs) have been holographically superimposed on each other. I suspect, that people like me, without being aware of it, have been used to create a New Twin-World around our New Planet Earth, because old Twin-World is falling apart !

Because of dual ability of an electron, Inorganic Beings from our Twin-World have been mixing holographically with us and our Earth for thousands of years !
Photo of Inorganic Beings' ancient stone tubes in Chehya.

And now about: WHERE WE HAVE BEEN STORING OUR MEMORIES HOLOGRAPHICALLY ? What I've read about it in Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe" did not satisfied my curiosity. But I found answer in books of Carlos Castaneda, Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau. Memories/experiences of our physical Everyday World we store in our legs (that part of legs, on which you are sitting). But our nightly journeys without physical bodies, that experience/memories we store in various positions of our brilliant Point of Perception (the Assemblage Point) in our Luminous White Balls. Seers learnt how to move their Points of Perception to those positions, when they need to remember something. Here is some info from Carlos Castaneda's "The Art of Dreaming" about, where our memories are really stored (not in the brain). And how Seers-Sorcerers withdrawing their memories back, when they need it :
"Ordinarily, apprentices do not remember these explanations at all, yet they somehow store them, faithfully intact, in their memories. Sorcerers have used this seeming peculiarity of memory and have turned remembering everything, that happens to them in the Second Attention, into one of the most difficult and complex traditional tasks of Sorcery. Sorcerers explain this seeming peculiarity of memory, and the task of remembering, saying, that every time anyone enters into the Second Attention, the Assemblage Point is on a different position. To remember, then, means to relocate the Assemblage Point on the exact position it occupied at the time those entrances into the Second Attention occurred. Don Juan assured me not only, that sorcerers have Total and Absolute Recall, but that they relive every experience they had in the Second Attention by this Act of returning their Assemblage Point to each of those specific positions. He also assured me, that Sorcerers dedicate a lifetime to fulfilling this task of Remembering. In the Second Attention, don Juan gave me very detailed explanations of Sorcery, knowing, that the Accuracy and Fidelity (Loyalty) of such instruction will remain with me, faithfully intact, for the duration of my life. About this quality of faithfulness he said, "Learning something in the Second Attention is just like learning, when we were children. What we learn remains with us for life. "It's second nature with me," we say when it comes to something we've learned very early in life... Lack of Energy is what has put a tight lid on Your Memory," Don Juan said. "When you have sufficient Energy, your Memory will work fine...Energy tends to be cumulative; if you follow the Warrior's Way impeccably, a Moment will come when Your Memory Opens Up...
"It just happens, that the presence of the Nagual induces a Shift of the Assemblage Point," he said. He guided me then into one of the display rooms of the museum
(of Anthropology and History in Mexico City) and said, that my question was apropos (appropriate) to what he had been planning to tell me.
"My intention was to explain to you, that the Position of the Assemblage Point is like a Vault (chamber), where Sorcerers keep their records," Don Juan said.
"I was tickled pink, when your Energy Body felt my Intent and you asked me about it. The Energy Body knows immensities (boundless). Let me show you how much it knows."
He instructed me to enter into Total Silence. He reminded me, that I was already in a special State of Awareness, because my Assemblage Point had been made to Shift by his presence. He assured me, that entering into Total Silence was going to allow the sculptures in that room to make me See and Hear inconceivable (unbelievable) things. He added, apparently to increase my confusion, that some of the archaeological pieces in that room had the capacity to produce, by themselves, a Shift of the Assemblage Point, and that,
if I reached a state of Total Silence, I would be actually witnessing scenes pertaining to the lives of the people, who made those pieces. He then began the strangest tour of a museum I have ever taken. He went around the room, describing and interpreting astounding details of every one of the large pieces. According to him, every archaeological piece in that room was a purposeful record, left by the People of Antiquity, a record, that don Juan, as a Sorcerer, was reading to me, as one would read a book. "Every piece here is designed to make the Assemblage Point Shift," he went on. "Fix your gaze on any of them, Silence Your Mind, and find out whether or not your Assemblage Point can be made to Shift."
"How would I know, that it has shifted?"
"Because you would See and Feel things, that are beyond your normal reach."
I gazed at the sculptures and Saw and Heard things, that I would be at a loss to explain. In the past, I had examined all those pieces with the bias of anthropology, always bearing in mind the descriptions of scholars in the field. Their descriptions of the functions of those pieces, rooted in modern man's cognition of the World, appeared to me, for the first time, to be utterly prejudiced, if not asinine (utterly stupid). What don Juan said about those pieces and what I heard and saw myself, gazing at them, was the farthest thing from what I had always read about them. My discomfort was so great, that I felt obliged to apologize to don Juan for, what
I thought, was my suggestibility. He did not laugh or make fun of me. He patiently explained, that Sorcerers were capable of leaving accurate records of their findings in the Position of the Assemblage Point. He maintained, that when it comes to getting to the essence of a written account, we have to use our sense of sympathetic or imaginative participation to go beyond the mere page, into the experience itself. However, in the Sorcerers' World, since there are no written pages, total records, which can be relived, instead of read, are left in the Position of the Assemblage Point. To illustrate his argument, don Juan talked about the Sorcerers' Teachings for the Second Attention. He said, that they are given, when the apprentice's Assemblage Point is on a place, other, than the normal one. The Position of the Assemblage Point becomes, in this manner, the Record of the Lesson.
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In order to play the Lesson back, the apprentice has to Return his/her Assemblage Point to the Position it occupied, when the Lesson was given. Don Juan concluded his remarks by reiterating, that to Return the Assemblage Point to All the Positions it Occupied, when the Lessons were Given, is an Accomplishment of the Highest Magnitude."

The Breakthrough

In 1948 Pribram was offered a position at Yale, and before leaving, he helped write up thirty years of Lashley's monumental research. At Yale, Pribram continued to ponder the idea, that memories were distributed throughout the brain, and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became. After all, patients, who had had portions of their brains removed for medical reasons, never suffered the loss of specific memories. Removal of a large section of the brain might cause a patient's memory to become generally hazy, but no one ever came out of surgery with any selective memory loss.
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Similarly, individuals, who had received head injuries in car collisions and other accidents, never forgot half of their family, or half of a novel, they had read. Even removal of sections of the temporal lobes, the area of the brain, that had figured so prominently in Penfield's research, didn't create any gaps in a person's memories. Pribram's thinking was further solidified by his and other researchers' inability to duplicate Penfield's findings, when stimulating brains other, than those of epileptics.
Even Penfield himself was unable to duplicate his results in non-epileptic patients. Despite the growing evidence, that memories were distributed, Pribram was still at a loss, as to how the brain might accomplish such a seemingly magical feat. Then in the mid-1960s an article, he read in Scientific American, describing the first construction of a Hologram, hit him like a thunderbolt. Not only was the concept of Holography dazzling, but it provided a solution to the puzzle, with which he had been wrestling. To understand why Pribram was so excited, it is necessary to understand a little more about Holograms. One of the things, that makes Holography possible, is a phenomenon, known as Interference. Interference is the criss-crossing pattern, that occurs, when two or more waves, such as waves of water, ripple through each other (like in the Fabric of Time, LM). For example, if you drop a pebble into a pond, it will produce a series of concentric waves, that expands outward. If you drop two pebbles into a pond, you will get two sets of waves, that expand and pass through one another. The complex arrangement of crests and troughs, that results from such collisions, is known as an interference pattern. Any wavelike phenomena can create an interference pattern, including light and radio waves. Because laser light is an extremely pure, coherent (stuck together) form of light, it is especially good at creating interference patterns. It provides, in essence, the perfect pebble and the perfect pond. As a result, it wasn't until the invention of the laser, that Holograms, as we know them today, became possible. A Hologram is produced, when a single laser light is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed (in this case an apple). Then the second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first. When this happens they create an Interference Pattern, which is then recorded on a piece of film. To the naked eye the image on the film looks nothing at all like the object photographed. In fact, it even looks a little like the concentric rings, that form, when a handful of pebbles is tossed into a pond. But as soon, as another laser beam (or in some instances just a bright light source) is shined through the film, a three-dimensional image of the original object reappears. The three-dimensionality of such images is often eerily convincing. You can actually walk around a Holographic Projection and view it from different angles, as you would a real object. However, if you reach out and try to touch it, your hand will waft (drift, float easily) right through it and you will discover: there is really nothing there.
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Three-dimensionality is not the only remarkable aspect of Holograms. If a piece of Holographic film containing the image of an apple is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the apple! Even if the halves are divided again and then again, an entire apple can still be reconstructed from each small portion of the film (although the images will get hazier as the portions get smaller). Unlike normal photographs, every small fragment of a piece of Holographic film contains all the information recorded in the Whole. This was precisely the feature, that got Pribram so excited, for it offered at last a way of understanding how memories could be distributed, rather than localized in the brain. If it was possible for every portion of a piece of holographic film to contain all the information, necessary to create a whole image, then it seemed equally possible for every part of the brain to contain all of the information necessary to recall a whole memory. It should be noted, that this astounding trait is common only to pieces of holographic film, whose images are invisible to the naked eye. If you buy a piece of Holographic film (or an object containing a piece of Holographic film) in a store and can see a three-dimensional image in it without any special kind of illumination, do not cut it in half. You will only end up with pieces of the original image.
Unlike normal photographs, every portion of a piece of Holographic film contains all of the information of the whole. Thus if a Holographic plate is broken into fragments, each piece can still be used to reconstruct the entire image.

Vision Also Is Holographic

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Memory is not the only thing the brain may process Holographically. Another of Lashley's discoveries was, that the visual centers of the brain were also surprisingly resistant to surgical excision. Even after removing as much, as 90 percent of a rat's visual cortex (the part of the brain, that receives and interprets, what the eye sees), he found: it could still perform tasks, requiring complex visual skills. Similarly, research conducted by Pribram revealed, that as much, as 98 percent of a cat's optic nerves can be severed, without seriously impairing its ability to perform complex visual tasks. Such a situation was tantamount to believing, that a movie audience could still enjoy a motion picture, even after 90 percent of the movie screen was missing, and his experiments presented once again a serious challenge to the standard understanding of how vision works. According to the leading theory of the day, there was a one-to-one correspondence between the image the eye sees and the way, that image is represented in the brain. In other words, when we look at a square, it was believed the electrical activity in our visual cortex also possesses the form of a square. Although findings, such as Lashley's, seemed to give a deathblow to this idea, Pribram was not satisfied. While he was at Yale, he devised a series of experiments to resolve the matter and spent the next seven years, carefully measuring the electrical activity in the brains of monkeys, while they performed various visual tasks. He discovered, that not only did no such one-to-one correspondence exist, but there wasn't even a discernible pattern to the sequence, in which the electrodes fired. He wrote of his findings:
"These experimental results are incompatible with a view, that a photographic-like image becomes projected onto the cortical surface. Vision theorists once believed: there was a one-to-one correspondence between an image the eye sees and how that image is represented in the brain. Pribram discovered this is not true. Once again the resistance, the visual cortex displayed toward surgical excision, suggested that, like memory, vision was also distributed, and after Pribram became aware of Holography, he began to wonder, if it, too, was Holographic. The "whole in every part" nature of a Hologram certainly seemed to explain, how so much of the visual cortex could be removed, without affecting the ability to perform visual tasks. If the brain was processing images, by employing some kind of internal Hologram, even a very small piece of the Hologram could still reconstruct the Whole of, what the eyes were seeing. It also explained the lack of any one-to-one correspondence between the external World and the brain's electrical activity. Again, if the brain was using Holographic Principles to process visual information, there would be no more one-to-one correspondence between electrical activity and images seen, than there was between the meaningless swirl of interference patterns on a piece of Holographic film and the image the film encoded. The only question, that remained, was: what Wavelike Phenomenon the Brain might be using to create such internal Holograms? As soon, as Pribram considered the question, he thought of a possible answer. It was known, that the electrical communications, that take place between the brain's nerve cells, or neurons, do not occur alone. Neurons possess branches like little trees, and when an electrical message reaches the end of one of these branches, it radiates outward, as does the ripple in a pond. Because neurons are packed together so densely, these expanding ripples of electricity—also a Wavelike Phenomenon — are constantly criss-crossing one another. When Pribram remembered this, he realized, that they were most assuredly creating an almost endless and kaleidoscopic array of Interference Patterns, and these, in turn, might be what give the brain its Holographic Properties. "The Hologram was there all the time in the wave-front nature of brain-cell connectivity, " observed Pribram. "We simply hadn't had the wit to realize it."

Other Puzzles, Explained by the Holographic Brain Model

Pribram published his first article on the possible Holographic Nature of the Brain in 1966, and continued to expand and refine his ideas during the next several years. As he did, and as other researchers became aware of his theory, it was quickly realized, that the distributed nature of Memory and Vision is not the only neurophysiological puzzle the Holographic Model can explain.

THE VASTNESS OF OUR MEMORY

Holography also explains how our brains can store so many memories in so little space. The brilliant Hungarian-born physicist and mathematician John von Neumann once calculated, that over the course of the average human lifetime, the brain stores something on the order of 2. 8 x 1020 (280, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000) bits of information. This is a staggering amount of information, and brain researchers have long struggled to come up with a mechanism, that explains such a vast capability. Interestingly, Holograms also possess a fantastic capacity for information storage. 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. Any image thus recorded can be retrieved simply by illuminating the film with a laser beam, possessing the same angle, as the original two beams. By employing this method researchers have calculated, that a one-inch-square of film can store the same amount of information contained in fifty dictionaries!

OUR ABILITY TO BOTH RECALL AND FORGET

Pieces of Holographic film containing multiple images, such as those, described above, also provide a way of understanding our ability to both recall and forget. When such a piece of film is held in a laser beam and tilted back and forth, the various images it contains appear and disappear in a glittering stream. It has been suggested, that our ability to remember is analogous to shining a laser beam on such a piece of film and calling up a particular image. Similarly, when we are unable to recall something, this may be equivalent to shining various beams on a piece of multiple-image film, but failing to find the right angle to call up the image/memory, for which we are searching (Sorcerers of Castaneda and Don Juan groups had totally different explanation to this. Besides, most Women and Men create holographic images with the help of their emotions without laser or any kind of technology for thousands of years ! LM).

ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY

In Proust's Swann's Way a sip of tea and a bite of a small, scallop shaped cake, known as a petite madeleine, cause the narrator to find himself suddenly flooded with memories from his past. At first he is puzzled, but then, slowly, after much effort on his part, he remembers, that his aunt used to give him tea and madeleines, when he was a little boy, and it is this association, that has stirred his memory. We have all had similar experiences—a whiff of a particular food being prepared, or a glimpse of some long-forgotten object—that suddenly evoke some scene out of our past. The Holographic Idea offers a further analogy for the associative tendencies of memory. This is illustrated by yet another kind of Holographic Recording Technique. First, the light of a single laser beam is bounced off two objects simultaneously, say an easy chair and a smoking pipe. The light bounced off each object is then allowed to collide, and the resulting interference pattern is captured on film. Then, whenever the easy chair is illuminated with laser light and the light, that reflects off the easy chair is passed through the film, a three-dimensional image of the pipe will appear. Conversely, whenever the same is done with the pipe, a Hologram of the easy chair appears. So, if our Brains function Holographically, a similar process may be responsible for the way certain objects evoke specific memories from our past.

OUR ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE FAMILIAR THINGS

At first glance our ability to recognize familiar things may not seem so unusual, but brain researchers have long realized it is quite a complex ability. For example, the absolute certainty we feel when, we spot a familiar face in a crowd of several hundred people, is not just a subjective emotion, but appears to be caused by an extremely fast and reliable form of information processing in our brain. In a 1970 article in the British science magazine Nature, physicist Pieter van Heerden proposed, that a type of Holography, known as Recognition Holography, offers a way of understanding this ability. In Recognition Holography a Holographic Image of an object is recorded in the usual manner, save that the laser beam is bounced off a special kind of mirror, known as a focusing mirror, before it is allowed to strike the unexposed film. If a second object, similar, but not identical to the first, is bathed in laser light and the light is bounced off the mirror and onto the film, after it has been developed, a bright point of light will appear on the film. The brighter and sharper the point of light, the greater the degree of similarity between the first and second objects. If the two objects are completely dissimilar, no point of light will appear. By placing a light-sensitive photocell behind the holographic film, one can actually use the setup, as a mechanical recognition system. Van Heerden, a researcher at the Polaroid Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, actually proposed his own version of a Holographic Theory of Memory in 1963, but his work went relatively unnoticed. A similar technique, known as Interference Holography, may also explain how
we can recognize both the familiar and unfamiliar features of an image, such as the face of someone we have not seen for many years. In this technique an object is viewed through a piece of holographic film, containing its image. When this is done, any feature of the object, that has changed since its image was originally recorded, will reflect light differently. An individual, looking through the film, is instantly aware of both: how the object has changed and how it has remained the same. The technique is so sensitive, that even the pressure of a finger on a block of granite shows up immediately, and the process has been found to have practical applications in the materials testing industry.

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

In 1972, Harvard vision researchers Daniel Pollen and Michael Tractenberg proposed, that the Holographic Brain Theory may explain why some people possess photographic memories (also known as eidetic memories). Typically, individuals with photographic memories will spend a few moments scanning the scene they wish to memorize. When they want to see the scene again, they "project" a mental image of it, either with their eyes closed or as they gaze at a blank wall or screen. In a study of one such individual, a Harvard art history professor named Elizabeth, Pollen and Tractenberg found, that the mental images she projected, were so real to her, that when she read an image of a page from Goethe's Faust her eyes moved as if she were reading a real page. Noting, that the image stored in a fragment of Holographic Film gets hazier, as the fragment gets smaller, Pollen and Tractenberg suggest, that perhaps such individuals have more vivid memories, because they somehow have access to very large regions of their Memory Holograms. Conversely, perhaps most of us have memories, that are much less vivid, because our access is limited to smaller regions of the Memory Holograms.
(I must add: most of us have less vivid memories, because we don't have enough personal energy, left in us to remember. Sorcerers restore all their memories to perfection by doing RECAPITULATION and Magical Passes for many years, means returning their lost energies! Carlos Castaneda and Taisha Abelar describe this method in their books and I posted some extracts about this technique on our website! By the way, Don Juan's team of Sorcerers were All experts on Practical Use of Holography! LM).

THE TRANSFERENCE OF LEARNED SKILLS

Pribram believes the Holographic Model also sheds light on our ability to transfer learned skills from one part of our body to another. As you sit reading this book, take a moment and trace your first name in the air with your left elbow. You will probably discover, that this is a relatively easy thing to do, and yet in all likelihood it is something you have never done before. It may not seem a surprising ability to you, but in the classic view, that various areas of the brain (such as the area controlling the movements of the elbow) are "hard-wired, " or able to perform tasks only after repetitive learning has caused the proper neural connections to become established between brain cells, this is something of a puzzle. Pribram points out, that the problem becomes much more tractable if the brain were to convert all of its memories, including memories of learned abilities such as writing, into a language of Interfering Wave Forms. Such a Brain would be much more flexible and could shift its stored information around with the same ease, that a skilled pianist transposes a song from one musical key to another. This same flexibility may explain how we are able to recognize a familiar face regardless of the angle, from which we are viewing it. Again, once the brain has memorized a face (or any other object or scene) and converted it into a language of wave forms, it can, in a sense, tumble this Internal Hologram around and examine it from any perspective it wants.

PHANTOM LIMB SENSATIONS AND HOW WE CONSTRUCT A "WORLD-OUT-THERE"

To most of us it is obvious, that our feelings of love, hunger, anger, and so on, are internal realities, and the sound of an orchestra playing, the heat of the Sun, the smell of bread baking, and so on, are external realities. But it is not so clear how our brains enable us to distinguish between the two. For example, Pribram points out, that when we look at a person, the image of the person is really on the surface of our retinas. Yet we do not perceive the person as being on our retinas.
We perceive them as being in the "world-out-there". Similarly, when we stub our toe we experience the pain in our toe. But the pain is not really in our toe. It is actually a neurophysiological process taking place somewhere in our brain. How then is our brain able to take the multitude of neurophysiological processes that manifest as our experience, all of which are internal, and fool us into thinking, that some are internal and some are located beyond the confines of our gray matter?
Creating the illusion, that things are located where they are not, is the quintessential (pure, highly concentrated essence of something) feature of a Hologram.
As mentioned, if you look at a Hologram it seems to have extension in Space, but if you pass your hand through it, you will discover there is nothing there. Despite what your senses tell you, no instrument will pick up the presence of any abnormal energy or substance, where the Hologram appears to be hovering. This is because a Hologram is a Virtual Image, an image, that appears to be where it is not, and possesses no more extension in Space, than does the three-dimensional image you see of yourself, when you look in a mirror. Just as the image in the mirror is located in the silvering on the mirror's back surface, the actual location of a Hologram is always in the photographic emulsion on the surface of the film recording it. Further evidence, that the brain is able to fool us into thinking, that inner processes are located outside the body, comes from the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Georg von Bekesy. In a series of experiments conducted in the late 1960s Bekesy placed vibrators on the knees of blindfolded test subjects. Then he varied the rates at which the instruments vibrated. By doing so he discovered, that he could make his test subjects experience the sensation, that a point source of vibration was jumping from one knee to the other. He found, that he could even make his subjects feel the point source of vibration in the space between their knees. In short, he demonstrated, that humans have the ability to seemingly experience sensation in spatial locations, where they have absolutely no sense receptors. Pribram believes, that Bekesy's work is compatible with the Holographic view and sheds additional light on how interfering wave fronts—or in Bekesy's case, interfering sources of physical vibration— enable the brain to localize some of its experiences beyond the physical boundaries of the body. He feels this process might also explain the Phantom Limb Phenomenon, or the sensation experienced by some amputees, that a missing arm or leg is still present. Such individuals often feel eerily realistic cramps, pains, and tinglings in these phantom appendages, but maybe what they are experiencing is the holographic memory of the limb, that is still recorded in the Interference Patterns in their brains.

Experimental Support for the Holographic Brain

For Pribram the many similarities between Brains and Holograms were tantalizing, but he knew his theory didn't mean anything unless it was backed up by more solid evidence. One researcher, who provided such evidence was Indiana University biologist Paul Pietsch. Intriguingly, Pietsch began as an ardent disbeliever in Pribram's theory. He was especially skeptical of Pribram's claim, that memories do not possess any specific location in the brain. To prove Pribram wrong, Pietsch devised a series of experiments, and as the test subjects of his experiments he chose salamanders. In previous studies he had discovered, that he could remove the brain of a salamander without killing it, and although it remained in a stupor (daze, trance inertia) as long, as its brain was missing, its behavior completely returned to normal as soon, as its brain was restored. Pietsch reasoned, that if a salamander's feeding behavior is not confined to any specific location in the brain, then it should not matter how its brain is positioned in its head. If it did matter, Pribram's theory would be disproven. He then flip-flopped the left and right hemispheres of a salamander's brain, but to his dismay, as soon, as it recovered, the salamander quickly resumed normal feeding. He took another salamander and turned its brain upside down. When salamander recovered it, too, fed normally. Growing increasingly frustrated, he decided to resort to more drastic measures. In a series of over 700 operations he sliced, flipped, shuffled, subtracted, and even minced the brains of his hapless subjects, but always when he replaced what was left of their brains, their behavior returned to normal. These findings and others turned Pietsch into a believer and attracted enough attention, that his research became the subject of a segment on the television show 60 Minutes. He writes about this experience as well, as giving detailed accounts of his experiments in his insightful book Shufflebrain.

The Mathematical Language of the Hologram

While the theories, that enabled the development of the Hologram, were first formulated in 1947 by Dennis Gabor (who later won a Nobel Prize for his efforts), in the late 1960s and early 1970s Pribram's theory received even more persuasive experimental support. When Gabor first conceived the idea of Holography, he wasn't thinking about lasers. His goal was to improve the electron microscope, then a primitive and imperfect device. His approach was a mathematical one, and the mathematics he used was a type of calculus invented by an eighteenth century Frenchman named Jean B. J. Fourier. Roughly speaking what Fourier developed was a mathematical way of converting any pattern, no matter how complex, into a language of simple waves. He also showed how these wave forms could be converted back into the original pattern. In other words, just as a television camera converts an image into electromagnetic frequencies and a television set converts those frequencies back into the original image, Fourier showed how a similar process could be achieved mathematically. The equations he developed to convert images into wave forms and back again are known as Fourier transforms. Fourier transforms enabled Gabor to convert a picture of an object into the blur of Interference Patterns on a piece of Holographic film. They also enabled him to devise a way of converting those Interference Patterns back into an image of the original object. In fact the special Whole in every part of a Hologram is one of the by-products, that occurs when an image or pattern is translated into the Fourier language of wave forms. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s various researchers contacted Pribram and told him they had uncovered evidence, that the visual system worked as a kind of frequency analyzer. Since frequency is a measure of the number of oscillations a wave undergoes per second, this strongly suggested, that the brain might be functioning as a Hologram does. But it wasn't until 1979, that Berkeley neurophysiologists Russell and Karen DeValoises made the discovery, that settled the matter. Research in the 1960s had shown, that each brain cell in the visual cortex is geared to respond to a different pattern—some brain cells fire when the eyes see a horizontal line, others fire when the eyes see a vertical line, and so on. As a result, many researchers concluded, that the brain takes input from these highly specialized cells called feature detectors, and somehow fits them together to provide us with our visual perceptions of the World. Despite the popularity of this view, the DeValoises felt it was only a partial truth. To test their assumption they used Fourier's equations to convert plaid and checkerboard patterns into simple wave forms. Then they tested to see how the brain cells in the visual cortex responded to these new wave-form images. What they found was, that the brain cells responded not to the original patterns, but to the Fourier translations of the patterns. Only one conclusion could be drawn. The Brain was using Fourier mathematics, the same mathematics Holography employed—to convert visual images into the Fourier language of wave forms. The DeValoises' discovery was subsequently confirmed by numerous other laboratories around the World, and although it did not provide absolute proof, that the Brain was a Hologram, it supplied enough evidence to convince Pribram his theory was correct. Spurred on by the idea, that the visual cortex was responding not to patterns, but to the frequencies of various waveforms, he began to reassess the role frequency played in the other senses. It didn't take long for him to realize, that the importance of this role had perhaps been overlooked by twentieth-century scientists. Over a century before the DeValoises' discovery, the German physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz had shown, that the ear was a frequency analyzer. More recent research revealed, that our sense of smell seems to be based on what are called osmic frequencies. Bekesy's work had clearly demonstrated that our skin is sensitive to frequencies of vibration, and he even produced some evidence that taste may involve frequency analysis. Interestingly, Bekesy also discovered that the mathematical equations, that enabled him to predict how his subjects would respond to various frequencies of vibration were also of the Fourier genre.

The Dancer, as a Wave Form

A Holographic Explanation of the Near-Death

Experience. These are astounding assertions. What is even more astounding is, that the scientific establishment has for the most part ignored both the conclusions of these researchers and the vast body of evidence, that compels them to make such statements. The reasons for this are complex and varied. One is, that it is currently not fashionable in science to consider seriously any phenomenon, that seems to support the idea of a spiritual reality, and, as mentioned at the beginning of this book, beliefs are like addictions, and do not surrender their grip easily. Another reason, as Moody mentions, is the widespread prejudice among scientists, that the only ideas, that have any value or significance are those, that can be proven in a strict scientific sense. Yet another is the inability of our current scientific understanding of reality even to begin to explain NDEs, if they are real. This last reason, however, may not be the problem it seems. Several NDE researchers have pointed out, that the holographic model offers us a way to understand these experiences. One such researcher is Dr. Kenneth Ring, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticu and one of the first NDE researchers to use statistical analysis and standardized interviewing techniques to study the phenomenon. In his 1980 book "Life at Death", Ring spends considerable time, arguing in favor of a holographic explanation of the NDE. Put bluntly, Ring believes, that NDEs are also ventures into the more frequency-like aspects of reality. Ring bases his conclusion on the numerous suggestively holographic aspects of the NDE. One is the tendency of experiencers to describe the world beyond, as a realm composed of "light", "higher vibrations" or "frequencies." Some NDEers even refer to the celestial music, that often accompanies such experiences, as more "a combination of vibrations", than actual sounds—observations, that Ring believes are evidence, that the act of dying involves a shift of consciousness away from the ordinary world of appearances and into a more holographic reality of pure frequency.
NDEers also frequently say, that characterizations, that the realm is suffused with a light more brilliant, than any they have ever seen on Earth, but one that, despite its unfathomable intensity, does not hurt the eyes, Ring feels are further evidence of the frequency aspects of the hereafter. "Another feature Ring finds undeniably holographic is NDEers' descriptions of Time and Space in the afterlife realm. One of the most commonly reported characteristics of the world beyond is, that it is a dimension, in which Time and Space cease to exist. "I found myself in a space, in a period of time, I would say, where all space and time was negated, " says one NDEer clumsily. "It has to be out of time and space.
It must be, because... it can't be put into a time thing, " says another. Given, that time and space are collapsed, and location has no meaning in the frequency domain, this is precisely, what we would expect to find, if NDEs take place in a holographic state of consciousness, says Ring. If the near-death realm is even more frequency-like, than our own level of reality, why does it appear to have any structure at all? Given that both OBEs and NDEs offer ample evidence, that the mind can exist independently of the brain, Ring believes it is not too farfetched to assume, that it, too, functions holographically. Thus, when the mind is in the "higher" frequencies of the near-death dimension, it continues to do, what it does best, translate those frequencies into a world of appearances. Or as Ring puts it, "I believe, that this is a realm, that is created by interacting thought structures. These structures or 'thought-forms' combine to form patterns, just as interference waves form patterns on a holographic plate. And just as the holographic image appears to be fully real, when illuminated by a laser beam, so the images, produced by interacting thought-forms, appear to be real."
Ring is not alone in his speculations. In the keynote address for the 1989 meeting of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), Dr. Elizabeth W. Fenske, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Philadelphia, announced, that she, too, believes, that NDEs are journeys into a holographic realm of higher frequencies. She agrees with Ring's hypothesis, that the landscapes, flowers, physical structures and so forth, of the afterlife dimension, are fashioned out of interacting (or interfering) thought patterns.
"I think we've come to the point in NDE research, where it's difficult to make a distinction between thought and light. In the near-death experience thought seems to be light, " she observes.
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Heaven as Hologram

In addition to those, mentioned by Ring and Fenske, the NDE has numerous other features, that are markedly holographic. Like OBEers, after NDEers have detached from the physical, they find themselves in one of two forms, either as a disembodied cloud of energy, or as a hologram-like body, sculpted by thought.
When the latter is the case, the mind-created nature of the body is often surprisingly obvious to the NDEer. For example, one near-death survivor says, that when
he first emerged from his body, he looked "something like a jellyfish" and fell lightly to the floor, like a soap bubble. Then he quickly expanded into a ghostly three-dimensional image of a naked man. However, the presence of two women in the room embarrassed him and to his surprise, this feeling caused him suddenly to become clothed (the women, however, never offered any indication, that they were able to see any of this). That our innermost feelings and desires are responsible, for creating the form we assume in the afterlife dimension, is evident in the experiences of other NDEers. People, who are confined in wheelchairs in their physical existence, find themselves in healthy bodies, that can run and dance. Amputees invariably have their limbs back. The elderly often inhabit youthful bodies, and even stranger, children frequently see themselves as adults, a fact, that may reflect every child's fantasy to be a grown-up, or more profoundly, may be a symbolic indication, that in our souls some of us are much older, than we realize. These hologram-like bodies can be remarkably detailed. In the incident, involving the man, who became embarrassed at his own nakedness, for example, the clothing, he materialized for himself, was so meticulously wrought, that he could even make out the seams in the material ! Similarly, another man, who studied his hands while in the ND, state, said:
"They were composed of light with tiny structures in them" and when he looked closely, he could even see "the delicate whorls of his fingerprints and tubes of light up his arms." Some of Whitton's research is also relevant to this issue. Amazingly, when Whitton hypnotized patients and regressed them to the between life state, they too reported all the classic features of the NDE, passage through a tunnel, encounters with deceased relatives and/or "guides", entrance into a splendorous light-filled realm, in which time and space no longer existed, encounters with luminous beings, and a life review. In fact, according to Whitton's subjects, the main purpose of the lite review was to refresh their memories, so they could more mindfully plan their next life, a process, in which the beings of light gently and noncoercively assisted. Like Ring, after studying the testimony of his subjects, Whitton concluded, that the shapes and structures one perceives in the afterlife dimension are thought-forms created by the mind. "Rene Descartes' famous dictum, 'I think, therefore I am" is never more pertinent, than in the between-life state," says Whitton. "There is no experience of existence without thought". This was especially true, when it came to the form Whitton's patients assumed in the between-life state. Several said, they didn't even have a body, unless they were thinking. "One man described it by saying, that if he stopped thinking, he was merely a cloud in an endless cloud, undifferentiated" he observes. "But as soon as he started to think, he became himself" (a state of affairs, that is oddly reminiscent of the subjects in Tart's mutual hypnosis experiment, who discovered, they didn't have hands, unless they thought them into existence). At first the bodies, Whitton's subjects assumed, resembled the persons, they had been in their last life. But as their experience in the between-life state continued, they gradually became a kind of hologram-like composite of all of their past lives. This composite identity even had a name, separate from any of the names, they had used in their physical incarnations, although none of his subjects was able to pronounce it, using their physical vocal cords. What do NDEers look like? when they have not constructed a hologram-like body for themselves? Many say, that they were not aware of any form and were simply "themselves" or "their mind."
Others have more specific impressions and describe themselves as "a cloud of colors, "a mist", "an energy pattern" or "an energy field" terms, that again suggest,
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that we are all ultimately just frequency phenomena, patterns of some unknown vibratory energy enfolded in the greater matrix of the frequency domain. Some NDEers assert, that in addition to being composed of colored frequencies of light, we are also constituted out of sound. "I realized, that each person and thing has its own musical tone range as well, as its own color range," says an Arizona housewife, who had an NDE during childbirth. "If you can imagine yourself effortlessly moving in and out among prismatic rays of light and hearing each person's musical notes join and harmonize with your own, when you touch or pass them, you would have some idea of the unseen world." The woman, who encountered many individuals in the afterlife realm, who manifested only as clouds of colors and sound, believes the mellifluous tones, each soul emanates, are, what people are describing, when they say, they hear beautiful music in the ND dimension. Like Monroe, some NDEers report being able to see in all directions at once, while in the disembodied state. After wondering, what he looked like, one man said, he suddenly found himself staring at his own back. Robert Sullivan, an amateur NDE researcher from Pennsylvania, who specializes in NDEs by soldiers during combat, interviewed a World War II veteran, who temporarily retained this ability even after he returned to his physical body. "He experienced three hundred-sixty-degree vision, while running away from a German machine-gun nest," says Sullivan. "Not only could he see ahead, as he ran, but he could see the gunners trying to draw a bead on him from behind."

Instantaneous Knowledge

Another part of the NDE, that possesses many holographic features, is the life review. Ring refers to it as "a holographic phenomenon par excellence." Grof and Joan Halifax, a Harvard medical anthropologist and the coauthor (with Grof) of "The Human Encounter with Death", have also commented on the life review's holographic aspects. According to several NDE researchers, including Moody, even many NDEers themselves use the term "holographic", when describing the experience.
The reason for this characterization is obvious as soon, as one begins to read accounts of the life review. Again and again NDEers use the same adjectives to describe it, referring to it, as an incredibly vivid, wrap-around, three-dimensional replay of their entire life. "It's like climbing right inside a movie of your life, " says one NDEer. "Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant." "The whole thing was really odd. I was there; I was actually seeing these flashbacks; I was actually walking through them, and it was so fast. Yet, it was slow enough, that I could take it all in," says another. During this instantaneous and panoramic remembrance NDEers reexperience all the emotions, the joys and the sorrows, that accompanied all of the events in their life. More than that, they feel all of the emotions of the people, with whom they have interacted as well. They feel the happiness of all the individuals, to whom they've been kind. If they have committed a hurtful act, they become acutely aware of the pain their victim felt, as a result of their thoughtlessness. And no event seems too trivial to be exempt. While reliving a moment in her childhood, one woman suddenly experienced all the loss and powerlessness her sister had felt after she (then a child) snatched a toy away from her sister. Whitton has uncovered evidence, that thoughtless acts are not the only things, that cause individuals remorse during the life review. Under hypnosis his subjects reported, that failed dreams and aspirations — things they had hoped to accomplish during their life, but had not - also caused them pangs of sadness. Thoughts, too, are replayed with exacting fidelity during the life review. Reveries, faces glimpsed once, but remembered for years, things, that made one laugh, the joy one felt, when gazing at a particular painting, childish worries, and long forgotten daydreams—all flit through one's mind in a second. As one NDEer summarizes, "Not even your thoughts are l o s t . . . Every thought was there." And so, the life review is holographic not only in its three-
dimensionality, but in the amazing capacity for information storage the process displays. It is also holographic in a third way. Like the kabbalistic "aleph," a mythical point in space and time, that contains all other points in space and time, it is a moment, that contains all other moments. Even the ability to perceive the life review seems holographic, in that it is a faculty, capable of experiencing something, that is paradoxically at once both incredibly rapid and yet slow enough to witness in detail.
As an NDEer in 1821 put it, it is the ability to "simultaneously comprehend the Whole and every part."
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In fact, the life review bares a marked resemblance to the afterlife judgment scenes, described in the sacred texts of many of the world's great religions, from the Egyptian to Christian, but with one crucial difference. Like Whitton's subjects, NDEers universally report, that they are never judged by the beings of light, but feel only love and acceptance in their presence. The only judgment, that ever takes place is self-judgment and arises solely out of the NDEer's own feelings of guilt and repentance. Occasionally the beings do assert themselves, but instead of behaving in an authoritarian manner, they act as guides and counselors, whose only purpose is to teach. This total lack of cosmic judgment and/or any divine system of punishment and reward has been and continues to be one of the most controversial aspects of the NDE among religious groups, but it is one of the most often reported features of the experience. What is the explanation? Moody believes it is as simple, as it is polemic. We live in a universe, that is far more benevolent, than we realize. That is not to say, that anything goes during the life review. Like Whitton's hypnotic subjects, after arriving in the realm of light NDEers appear to enter a state of heightened or metaconsciousness awareness and become lucidly honest in their self-reflections. It also does not mean, that the beings of light prescribe no values. In NDE after NDE they stress two things. One is the importance of love. Over and over they repeat this message, that we must learn to replace anger with love, learn to love more, learn to forgive and love everyone unconditionally, and learn, that we in turn are loved. This appears to be the only moral criterion the beings use. Even sexual activity ceases to possess the moral stigma we humans are so fond of attaching to it. One of Whitton's subjects reported, that after living several withdrawn and depressed incarnations, he was urged to plan a life as an amorous and sexually active female, in order to add balance to the overall development of his soul. It appears, that in the minds of the beings of light, compassion is the barometer of grace, and time and time again, when NDEers wonder, if some act, they committed, was right or wrong, the beings counter their inquiries only with a question:
Did you do it out of love? Was the motivation love? That is why we have been placed here on the Earth, say the beings, to learn, that love is the key. They acknow-
ledge, that it is a difficult undertaking, but intimate, that it is crucial to both our biological and spiritual existence in ways, that we have perhaps not even begun to fathom. Even children return from the near-death realm with this message firmly impressed in their thoughts. States one little boy, who after being hit by a car, was guided into the world beyond by two people in "very white" robes: "What I learned there is, that the most important thing is loving, while you are alive." The second thing the beings emphasize is knowledge. Frequently NDEers comment, that the beings seemed pleased, whenever an incident, involving knowledge or learning, flickered by during their life review. Some are openly counseled to embark on a quest for knowledge, after they return to their physical bodies, especially knowledge, related to self-growth or that enhances one's ability to help other people. Others are prodded with statements such as "learning is a continuous process and goes on even after death" and "knowledge is one of the few things you will be able to take with you after you have died." The preeminence of knowledge in the afterlife dimension is apparent in another way.
Some NDEers discovered, that in the presence of the light, they suddenly had direct access to all knowledge. This access manifested in several ways. Sometimes it came in response to inquiries. One man said, that all, he had to do, was ask a question, such as, what would it be like to be an insect, and instantly the experience was his. Another NDEer described it by saying, "You can think of a question... and immediately know the answer to it. As simple, as that. And it can be any question whatsoever. It can be on a subject, that you don't know anything about, that you are not in the proper position even to understand and the light will give you the instantaneous correct answer and make you understand it." Some NDEers report, that they didn't even have to ask questions, in order to access this infinite library of information. Following their life review, they just suddenly knew everything, all the knowledge, there was to know, from the beginning of Time to the end. Others came into contact with this knowledge after the being of light made some specific gesture, such as wave its hand. Still others said, that instead of acquiring the knowledge, they remembered it, but forgot most of, what they recalled as soon, as they returned to their physical bodies (an amnesia, that seems to be universal among NDEers, who are privy to such visions). Whatever the case, it appears, that once we are in the world beyond, it is no longer necessary to enter an altered state of consciousness, in order to have access to the transpersonal and infinitely interconnected informational realm, experienced by Grof's patients.
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In addition to being holographic in all the ways, already mentioned, this vision of total knowledge has another holographic characteristic. NDEers often say, that during the vision the information arrives in nonlinear "chunks" (rotes), that register instantaneously in one's thoughts. In other words, rather than, being strung out in a linear fashion, like words in a sentence or scenes in a movie, all the facts, details, images, and pieces of information burst into one's awareness in an instant (rotes).
One NDEer referred to these bursts of information as "bundles of thought." Monroe, who has also experienced such instantaneous explosions of information while in the OB state, calls them "rotes" or "thought balls." Indeed, anyone, who possesses any appreciable psychic ability, is familiar with this experience, for this is the form, in which one receives psychic information as well. For instance, sometimes, when I meet a stranger (and on occasion even when I just hear a person's name), a thought ball of information about that person will instantly flash into my awareness. This thought ball can include important facts about the person's psychological and emotional makeup, their health, and even scenes from their past. I find, that I am especially prone to getting thought balls about people, who are in some kind of crisis. For example, recently I met a woman and instantly knew, she was contemplating suicide. I also knew some of the reasons why. As I always do in such situations,
I started talking to her and cautiously maneuvered the conversation to things psychic. After finding out, that she was receptive to the subject, I confronted her with what I knew and got her to talk about her problems. I got her to promise to seek some kind of professional counseling, instead of the darker option, she was consider
ing. Receiving information in this manner is similar to the way one becomes aware of information, while dreaming. Virtually everyone has had a dream, in which they find themselves in a situation and suddenly know all kinds of things about it, without being told. For instance, you might dream you are at a party and as soon, as you are there, you know, who it is being given for and why. Similarly, everyone has had a detailed idea or inspiration dawn upon them in a flash. Such experiences are lesser versions of the thought ball effect. Interestingly, because these bursts of psychic information arrive in nonlinear chunks, it sometimes takes me several moments to translate them into words. Like the psychological gestalts, experienced by individuals during transpersonal experiences, they are holographic in the sense, that they are instantaneous "wholes" our time-oriented minds must struggle with for a moment, in order to unravel and convert into a serial arrangement of parts. What form does the knowledge contained in the thought balls, experienced during NDEs take? According to NDEers all forms of communication are used, sounds, moving hologramlike images, even telepathy—a fact, that Ring believes, demonstrates once again, that the hereafter is "a world of existence, where thought is king." The thoughtful reader may immediately wonder, why the quest for learning is so important during life, if we have access to all knowledge after we die?
When asked this question, NDEers replied, that they weren't certain, but felt strongly, that it had something to do with the purpose of life and the ability of each individual to reach out and help others.

Life Plans and Parallel Time Tracks

Like Whitton, NDE researchers have also uncovered evidence, that our lives are planned beforehand, at least to some extent, and we each play a role in the creation of this plan. This is apparent in several aspects of the experience. Frequently after arriving in the world of light, NDEers are told, that "it is not their time yet." As Ring points out, this remark clearly implies the existence of some kind of "life plan." It is also clear, that NDEers play a role in the formulation of these destinies, for they are often given the choice whether to return or stay. There are even instances of NDEers being told, that it is their time and still being allowed to return. Moody cites a case, in which a man started to cry, when he realized, he was dead, because he was afraid, his wife wouldn't be able to raise their nephew without him. On hearing this, the being told him, that since he wasn't asking for himself, he would be allowed to return. In another case a woman argued, that she hadn't danced enough yet. Her remark caused the being of light to give a hearty laugh and she, too, was given permission to return to physical life. That our future is at least partially sketched out is also evident in a phenomenon Ring calls the "personal flashforward. " On occasion, during the vision of knowledge, NDEers are shown glimpses of their own future.
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In one particularly striking case a child NDEer was told various specifics about his future, including the fact, that he would be married at age twenty- eight and would have two children. He was even shown his adult self and his future children, sitting in a room of the house, he would eventually be living in, and as he gazed at the room, he noticed something very strange on the wall, something that his mind could not grasp. Decades later and after each of these predictions had come to pass,
he found himself in the very scene, he had witnessed as a child and realized, that the strange object on the wall was a "forced-air heater, " a kind of heater, that had not yet been invented at the time of his NDE. In another equally astonishing personal flashforward a female NDEer was shown a photograph of Moody, told his full name, and told, that when the time was right, she would tell him about her experience. The year was 1971 and Moody had not yet published "Life after Life", so his name and picture meant nothing to the woman. However, the time became "right" four years later, when Moody and his family unwittingly moved to the very street, on which the woman lived. That Halloween Moody's son was out trick-or-treating and knocked on the woman's door. After hearing the boy's name, the woman told him to tell his father, she had to talk to him, and when Moody obliged, she related her remarkable story. Some NDEs even support Loye's proposal, that several holographic parallel universes, or time tracks, exist. On occasion NDEers are shown personal flashforwards and told, that the future they have witnessed, will come to pass only, if they continue on their current path. In one unique instance an NDEer was shown a completely different history of the earth, a history, that would have developed, if "certain events" had not taken place around the time of the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras three thousand years ago. The vision revealed, that if these events, the precise nature of which the woman does not disclose, had failed to take place, we would now be living in a world of peace and harmony, marked "by the absence of religious wars and of a Christ figure." Such experiences suggest, that the laws of time and space, operative in a holographic universe, may be very strange indeed. Even NDEers, who do not experience direct evidence of the role, they play in their own destiny, often come back with a firm understanding of the holographic interconnectedness of all things. As a sixty-twoyear- old businessman, who had an NDE during a cardiac arrest, puts it "One thing, I learned, was, that we are all part of one big, living Universe. If we think we can hurt another person or another living thing without hurting ourselves, we are sadly mistaken. I look at a forest or a flower or a bird now, and say:"That is me, part of me." We are connected with all things and, if we send love along those connections, then we are happy."

You Can Eat, but You Don't Have To

The holographic and mind-created aspects of the near-death dimension are apparent in myriad other ways. In describing the hereafter one child said, that food appeared, whenever she wished for it, but there was no need to eat, an observation, that underscores once again the illusory and hologramlike nature of afterlife reality. Even the symbolic language of the psyche is given "objective" form. For example, one of Whitton's subjects said, that when he was introduced to a woman, who was going to figure prominently in his next life, instead of appearing as a human, she appeared as a shape, that was half-rose, half-cobra. After being directed to figure out the meaning of the symbolism, he realized, that he and the woman had been in love with one another in two other lifetimes. However, she had also twice been responsible for his death. Thus, instead of manifesting as a human, the loving and sinister elements of her character caused her to appear in a hologramlike form, that better symbolized these two, dramatically polar, qualities. Whitton's subject is not alone in his experience. Hazrat Inayat Khan said, that when he entered a mystical state and traveled to "divine realities", the beings, he encountered, also occasionally appeared in half-human, half-animal forms. Like Whitton's subject, Khan discerned, that these transfigurations were symbolic, and when a being appeared as part animal, it was, because the animal symbolized some quality the being possessed. For example, a being, that had great strength, might appear with the head of a lion, or a being, that was unusually smart and crafty, might have some of the features of a fox. Khan theorized, that this is why ancient cultures, such as the Egyptian, pictured the gods, that rule the afterlife realm, as having animal heads.
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The propensity near-death reality has for molding itself into hologramlike shapes, that mirror the thoughts, desires, and symbols, that populate our minds, explains why Westerners tend to perceive the beings of light, as Christian religious figures, why Indians perceive them as Hindu saints and deities, and so on. The plasticity of the ND realm suggests, that such outward appearances may be no more or less real, than the food wished into existence by the little girl, mentioned above, the woman, who appeared as an amalgam of a cobra and a rose, and the spectral clothing conjured into existence by the NDEer, who was embarrassed at his own nakedness. This same plasticity explains the other cultural differences one finds in near-death experiences, such as, why some NDEers reach the hereafter by traveling through a tunnel, some by crossing a bridge, some by going over a body of water, and some simply by walking down a road. Again it appears, that in a reality created solely out of interacting thought structures, even the landscape itself is sculpted by the ideas and expectations of the experiencer. At this juncture an important point needs to be made. As startling and foreign, as the near-death realm seems, the evidence, presented in this book, reveals, that our own level of existence may not be all that different. As we have seen, we too can access all information, it is just a little more difficult for us. We too can sometimes have personal flashforwards and come face-to-face with the phantasmal nature of time and space. And we too can sculpt and reshape our bodies, and sometimes even our reality, according to our beliefs, it just takes us a little more time and effort. Indeed, Sai Baba's abilities suggest, that we can even materialize food simply, by wishing for it, and Therese Neumann's inedia offers evidence,
that eating may ultimately be as unnecessary for us, as it is for individuals in the near-death realm. In fact, it appears, that this reality and the next are different in degree, but not in kind. Both are hologramlike constructs, realities, that are established, as Jahn and Dunne put it, only by the interaction of consciousness with its environment. Put another way, our reality appears to be a more frozen version of the afterlife dimension. It takes a little more time for our beliefs to resculpt our bodies into things like nail-like stigmata and for the symbolic language of our psyches to manifest externally as synchronicities.
But manifest they do, in a slow and inexorable river, a river, whose persistent presence teaches us, that we live in a universe, we are only just beginning to understand.

Information about the Near-Death Realm from Other Sources

One does not have to be in a life-threatening crisis to visit the afterlife dimension. There is evidence, that the ND realm can also be reached during OBEs. In his writings, Monroe describes several visits to levels of reality, in which he encountered deceased friends. An even more skilled out-of-body visitor to the land of the dead was Swedish mystic Swedenborg. Born in 1688, Swedenborg was the Leonardo da Vinci of his era. In his early years he studied science. He was the leading mathematician in Sweden, spoke nine languages, was an engraver, a politician, an astronomer, and a businessman, built watches and microscopes as a hobby, wrote books on metallurgy, color theory, commerce, economics, physics, chemistry, mining, and anatomy, and invented prototypes for the airplane and the submarine. Throughout all of this he also meditated regularly, and when he reached middle age, developed the ability to enter deep trances, during which he left his body and visited, what appeared to him to be, heaven and conversed with "angels" and "spirits. " That Swedenborg was experiencing something profound during these journeys, there can be no doubt. He became so famous for this ability, that the queen of Sweden asked him to find out, why her deceased brother had neglected to respond to a letter, she had sent him before his death. Swedenborg promised to consult the deceased and the next day returned with a message, which the queen confessed contained information only she and her dead brother knew. Swedenborg performed this service several times for various individuals, who sought his help, and on another occasion told a widow, where to find a secret compartment in her deceased husband's desk, in which she found some desperately needed documents. So well known was this latter incident, that it inspired the German philosopher Immanuel Kant to write an entire book on Swedenborg, entitled "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer". But the most amazing thing about Swedenborg's accounts of the afterlife realm is how closely they mirror the descriptions, offered by modern-day NDEers. For example, Swedenborg talks about passing through a dark tunnel, being met by welcoming spirits, landscapes more beautiful, than any on earth and one, where time and space no longer exist, a dazzling light, that emitted a feeling of love, appearing before beings of light, and being enveloped by an all-encompassing peace and serenity.
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He also says, that he was allowed to observe firsthand the arrival of the newly deceased in heaven, and watch, as they were subjected to the life review, a process,
he called "the opening of the "Book of Lives". He acknowledged, that during the process a person witnessed "everything they had ever been or done," but added a unique twist. According to Swedenborg, the information, that arose during the opening of the "Book of Lives", was recorded in the nervous system of the person's spiritual body. Thus, in order to evoke, the life review an "angel" had to examine the individual's entire body, "beginning with the fingers of each hand, and proceeding through the whole." Swedenborg also refers to the holographic thought balls, the angels use to communicate, and says, that they are no different from the portrayals, he could see in the "wave-substance", that surrounded a person. Like most NDEers he describes these telepathic bursts of knowledge, as a picture language so dense with information, that each image contains a thousand ideas. A communicated series of these portrayals can also be quite lengthy and "last up to several hours, in such a sequential arrangement, that one can only marvel." But even here Swedenborg added a fascinating twist. In addition to using portrayals, angels also employ a speech, that contains concepts, that are beyond human understanding. In fact, the main reason, they use portrayals, is because it is the only way, they can make even a pale version of their thoughts and ideas, comprehensible to human beings. Swedenborg's experiences even corroborate some of the, less commonly reported, elements of the NDE. Swedenborg noted, that in the spirit world one no longer needs to eat food, but added, that information takes its place, as a source of nourishment. He said, that when spirits and angels talked, their thoughts were constantly coalescing into three-dimensional symbolic images, especially animals. For example, he said, that when angels talked about love and affection, "beautiful animals are presented, such as lambs. When however the angels are talking about evil affections, this is portrayed by hideous, fierce, and useless animals, like tigers, bears, wolves, scorpions, snakes, and mice." Although it is not a feature, reported by modern NDEers, Swedenborg said, that he was astonished to find, that in heaven there are also spirits from other planets, an astounding assertion for a man, who was born over three hundred years ago! Most intriguing of all are those remarks by Swedenborg, that seem to refer to reality's holographic qualities. For instance, he said, that although human beings appear to be separate from one another, we are all connected in a cosmic unity. Moreover, each of us is a heaven in miniature, and every person, indeed the entire physical universe, is a microcosm of the greater divine reality. As we have seen, he also believed, that underlying visible reality was a wave-substance. In fact, several Swedenborg scholars have commented on the many parallels between some of Swedenborg's concepts and Bohm and Pribram's theory. One such scholar is Dr. George F. Dole, a professor of theology at the Swedenborg School of Religion in Newton, Massachusetts. Dole, who holds degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Harvard, notes, that one of the most basic tenets of Swedenborg's thinking is, that our universe is constantly created and sustained by two wavelike flows, one from heaven and one coming from our own soul or spirit. "If we put these images together, the resemblance to the hologram is striking" says Dole. "We are constituted by the intersection of two flows—one direct, from the divine, and one indirect, from the divine via our environment. We can view ourselves as interference patterns, because the inflow is a wave phenomenon, and we are, where the waves meet." Swedenborg also believed that, despite its ghostlike and ephemeral qualities, heaven is actually a more fundamental level of reality, than our own physical world. It is, he said, the archetypal source, from which all earthly forms originate, and to which all forms return, a concept not too dissimilar from Bohm's idea of the implicate and explicate orders. In addition, he too believed, that the afterlife realm and physical reality are different in degree, but not in kind, and that the material world is just a frozen version of the thought-built reality of heaven.
The matter, that comprises both heaven and earth "flows in by stages" from the Divine, said Swedenborg, and "at each new stage it becomes more general and therefore coarser and hazier, and it becomes slower, and therefore more viscous and colder." Swedenborg filled almost twenty volumes with his experiences, and on his deathbed was asked, if there was anything he wanted to recant. He earnestly replied: "Everything, that I have written, is as true, as you now behold me. I might have said much more, had it been permitted to me. After death you will see all, and then we shall have much to say to each other on the subject."

The Land of Nonwhere

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Swedenborg is not the only individual in history, who possessed the ability to make out-of-body journeys to the subtler levels of reality. The twelfth-century Persian Sufis also employed deep trancelike meditation to visit the "land, where spirits dwell." And again, the parallels between their reports and the body of evidence, that has accrued (accumulated) in this chapter, are striking. They claimed, that in this other realm one possesses a "subtle body" and relies on senses, that are not always associated with "specific organs" in that body. They asserted, that it is a dimension, populated by many spiritual teachers, or imams, and sometimes called it "the country of the hidden Imam." They held, that it is a world, created solely out of the subtle matter of alam almithal, or thought. Even space itself, including "nearness", "distances" and "far-off" places, was created by thought. But this did not mean, that the country of the hidden Imam, was unreal, a world, constituted out of sheer nothingness. Nor was it a landscape, created by only one mind. Rather it was a plane of existence, created by the imagination of many people, and yet one, that still had its own corporeality and dimension, its own forests, mountains, and even cities. The Sufis devoted a good deal of their writings to the clarification of this point. So alien is this idea to many Western thinkers, that the late Henry Corbin, a professor of Islamic Religion at the Sorbonne in Paris and a leading authority in Iranian-Islamic thought, coined the term 'imaginal' to describe it, meaning a world, that is created by imagination, but is ontologically no less real, than physical reality. "The reason, I absolutely had to find another expression, was that, for a good many years, my profession required me to interpret Arabic and Persian texts, whose meaning I would undoubtedly have betrayed, had I simply contented myself with the term imaginary," stated Corbin. Because of the imaginal nature of the afterlife realm, the Sufis concluded, that imagination itself is a faculty of perception, an idea, that offers new light on why Whitton's subject materialized a hand, only after he started thinking, and why visualizing images has such a potent effect on the health and physical structure of our bodies. It also contributed to the Sufis' belief, that one could use visualization, a process they called "creative prayer," to alter and reshape the very fabric of one's destiny. In a notion, that parallels Bohm's implicate and explicate orders, the Sufis believed that, despite its phantasmal qualities, the afterlife realm is the generative matrix, that gives birth to the entire physical universe. All things in physical reality arise from this spiritual reality, said the Sufis. However, even the most learned among them found this strange, that, by meditating and venturing deep into the psyche, one arrived in an inner world, that "turns out to envelop, surround, or contain that, which at first was outer and visible." This realization is, of course, just another reference to the nonlocal and holographic qualities of reality. Each of us contains the whole of heaven. More than that, each of us contains the location of heaven. Or as the Sufis put it, instead of having to search for spiritual reality "in the where," the "where" is in us. Indeed, in discussing the nonlocal aspects of the afterlife realm, a twelfth-century Persian mystic, named Sohrawardi said, that the country of the hidden Imam might better be called Na-Koja-Abad, "the land of nonwhere." Admittedly this idea is not new. It is the same sentiment, expressed in the statement "the kingdom of heaven is within."
What is new, is the idea, that such notions are actually references to the nonlocal aspects of the subtler levels of reality. Again, it is suggested, that when a person has an OBE, they might not actually travel anywhere. They might be merely altering the always illusory hologram of reality, so that they have the experience of traveling somewhere. In a holographic universe not only is consciousness already everywhere, it too is nonwhere. The idea, that the afterlife realm lies deep in the nonlocal expanse of the psyche, has been alluded to by some NDEers. As one seven-year old boy put it: "Death is like walking into your mind." Bohm offers a similarly nonlocal view of, what happens during our transition from this life to the next: "At the present, our whole thought process is telling us, that we have to keep our attention here. You can't cross the street, for example, if you don't. But consciousness is always in the unlimited depth, which is beyond space and time, in the subtler levels of the implicate order. Therefore, if you went deeply enough into the actual present, then maybe there's no difference between this moment and the next. The idea would be, that in the death experience you would get into that. Contact with eternity is in the present moment, but it is mediated by thought. It is a matter of attention."

Intelligent and Coordinated Images of Light

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The idea, that the subtler levels of reality can be accessed through a shift in consciousness alone, is also one of the main premises of the yogic tradition. Many yogic practices are designed specifically to teach individuals, how to make such journeys. And once again, the individuals, who succeed in these ventures, describe what is by now a familiar landscape. One such individual was Sri Yukteswar Giri, a little known, but widely respected Hindu holy man, who died in Puri, India, in 1936. Evans-
Wentz, who met Sri Yukteswar in the 1920s, described him as a man of "pleasing presence and high character" fully "worthy of the veneration (honour), that his followers accorded him." Individuals, who live in this wondrous realm, can materialize any body they want and can "see" with any area of their body, they wish. They can also materialize any fruit or other food, they desire, although they "are almost freed from any necessity of eating" and "feast only on the ambrosia (anything with delicious flavour) of eternally new knowledge." Sri Yukteswar appears to have been especially gifted at passing back and forth between this world and the next, and described the afterlife dimension, as a world, composed of "various subtle vibrations of light and color" and "hundreds of times larger, than the material cosmos. He also said, that it was infinitely more beautiful, than our own realm of existence, and abounded with "opal lakes, bright seas, and rainbow rivers." Because it is more "vibrant with God's creative light" its weather is always pleasant, and its only climatic manifestations are occasional falls of "luminous white snow and rain of manycolored lights." They communicate through a telepathic series of "light pictures," rejoice at
"the immortality of friendship," realize "the indestructibility of love," feel keen pain "if any mistake is made in conduct or perception of truth," and when they are confronted with the multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during their "different incarnations on earth," they are at a loss, as to whom to love especially and thus learn to give "a divine and equal love to all." What is the quintessential nature of our reality, once we take up residence in this luminous land? To this question, Sri Yukteswar gave an answer, that was as simple, as it was holographic. In this realm, where eating and even breathing are unnecessary, where a single thought can materialize a "whole garden of fragrant flowers," and all bodily injuries are "healed at once by mere willing", we are, quite simply, "intelligent and coordinated images of light".

More References to Light

Sri Yukteswar is not the only yogic teacher to use such hologram-like terms, when describing the subtler levels of reality. Another is Sri Aurobindo Ghose, a thinker, political activist, and mystic, whom Indians revere alongside Gandhi. Born in 1872 to an upper-class Indian family, Sri Aurobindo was educated in England, where
he quickly developed the reputation, as a kind of prodigy. He was fluent not only in English, Hindi, Russian, German, and French, but also in ancient Sanskrit. He could read a case of books a day (as a youth, he read all of the many and voluminous sacred books of India) and repeat verbatim every word on every page, that he read.
His powers of concentration were legendary, and it was said, that he could sit studying in the same posture all night long, oblivious even to the incessant bites of the mosquitoes. Like Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo was active in the nationalist movement in India and spent time in prison for sedition (rebelion against authority). However, despite all his intellectual and humanitarian passion, he remained an atheist, until one day, when he saw a wandering yogi instantaneously heal his brother of a life-
threatening illness. From that point on, Sri Aurobindo devoted his life to the yogic disciplines and, like Sri Yukteswar, through meditation he eventually learned to become, in his own words, "an explorer of the planes of consciousness." It was not an easy task for Sri Aurobindo, and one of the most intractable obstacles, he had to overcome to accomplish his goal, was to learn how to silence the endless chatter of words and thoughts, that flow unceasingly through the normal human mind. Anyone, who has ever tried to empty his or her mind of all thought for even a moment or two, knows how daunting (discouraging) an undertaking this is. But it is also a necessary one, for the yogic texts are quite explicit on this point. To plumb the subtler and more implicate regions of the psyche does indeed require a Bohmian shift of attention. Or, as Sri Aurobindo put it, to discover the "new country within us" we must first learn how "to leave the old one behind."
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It took Sri Aurobindo years to learn, how to silence his mind and travel inward, but once he succeeded, he discovered the same vast territory, encountered by all of the other Marco Polos of the spirit thai, we have looked at—a realm beyond space and time, composed of a "multicolored infinity of vibrations" and peopled by non-physical beings, so far in advance of human consciousness, that they make us look like children. These beings can take on any form at will, said Sri Aurobindo, the same being, appearing as a saint and to an Indian as a Hindu one, although he stressed, that their purpose is not to deceive, but merely to make themselves more accessible "to a particular consciousness."
According to Sri Aurobindo, in their truest form these beings appear as "pure vibration." In his two-volume work "On Yoga" he even likens their ability to appear as either a form or a vibration, to the waveparticle duality, discovered by "modern science." Sri Aurobindo also noted, that in this luminous realm one is no longer restricted to taking in information in a "point-by-point" manner, but can absorb it "in great masses" and in a single glance perceive "large extensions of space and time." In fact, quite a number of Sri Aurobindo's assertions are indistinguishable from many of Bohm's and Pribram's conclusions. He said, that most human beings possess a "mental screen", that keeps us from seeing beyond "the veil of matter", but when one learns to peer beyond this veil, one finds, that everything is comprised of "different intensities of luminous vibrations." He asserted, that consciousness is also composed of different vibrations, and believed, that all matter is to some degree conscious. Like Bohm, he even asserted, that psychokinesis is a direct result of the fact, that all matter is to some degree conscious. If matter were not conscious, no yogi could move an object with his mind, because there would be no possibility of contact between the yogi and the object, Sri Aurobindo says. Most Bohmian of all are Sri Aurobindo's remarks about wholeness and fragmentation. According to Sri Aurobindo, one of the most important things one learns in "the great and luminous kingdoms of the Spirit, " is, that all separateness is an illusion, and all things are ultimately interconnected and whole. Again and again in his writings he stressed this fact, and held, that it was only as one descended from the higher vibrational levels of reality to the lower, that a "progressive law of fragmentation" took over. We fragment things, because we exist at a lower vibration of consciousness and reality, says Sri Aurobindo, and it is our propensity (tendency) for fragmentation, that keeps us from experiencing the intensity of consciousness, joy, love, and delight for existence, that are the norm in these higher and more subtle realms. Just as Bohm believes, that it is not possible for disorder to exist in a Universe, that is ultimately unbroken and whole, Sri Aurobindo believed the same was true of consciousness. If a single point of the universe were totally unconscious, the whole universe would be totally unconscious, he said, and if we perceive a pebble at the side of the road or a grain of sand under our fingernail to be lifeless and dead, our perception is again illusory and brought on only by our somnambulistic inurement (sleepwalking, used to something unpleasant) with fragmentation. Like Bohm, Sri Aurobindo's epiphanic understanding of wholeness also made him aware of the ultimate relativity of all truths and the arbitrariness of trying to divide the seamless holomovement up into "things". So convinced was he, that any attempt to reduce the Universe into absolute facts and unchangeable doctrine, only led to distortion, that he was even against religion, and all his life emphasized, that the true spirituality came not from any organization or priesthood, but from the spiritual universe within. We must not only cut asunder the snare of the mind and the senses, but flee also from the snare of the thinker, the snare of the theologian and the church-builder, the meshes of the Word and the bondage of the Idea. All these are within us waiting to wall in the spirit with forms; but we must always go beyond, always renounce the lesser for the greater, the finite for the Infinite; we must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soulstate....Nor must we attach ourselves even to the truths, we hold most securely, for they are, but forms and expressions of the Ineffable (indescribable), who refuses to limit itself to any form or expression. But if the cosmos is ultimately ineffable, a farrago (mixture) of multicolored vibrations, what are all the forms we perceive? What is physical reality? It is, said Sri Aurobindo, just "a mass of stable light." The picture of reality, reported by NDEers, is remarkably self-consistent and is corroborated by the testimony of many of the world's most talented mystics as well.

Survival in Infinity

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Even more astonishing is, that, as breathtaking and foreign, as these subtler levels of reality are to those of us, who reside in the world's more "advanced" cultures, they are mundane and familiar territories to so-called primitive peoples. For example, Dr. E. Nandisvara Nayake Thero, an anthropologist, who has lived with and studied a community of aborigines in Australia, points out, that the aboriginal concept of the "dreamtime, " a realm, that Australian shamans visit by entering a profound trance, is almost identical to the afterlife planes of existence described in Western sources.
It is the realm, where human spirits go after death, and once there a shaman can converse with the dead and instantly access all knowledge. It is also a dimension, in which time, space, and the other boundaries of earthly life cease to exist and one must learn to deal with Infinity. Because of this, Australian shamans often refer to the afterlife as "survival in Infinity." Holger Kalweit, a German ethnopsychologist with degrees in both psychology and cultural anthropology, goes Thero one better. An expert on shamanism, who is also active in near-death research, Kalweit points out, that virtually all of the world's shamanic traditions contain descriptions of this vast and extradimensional realm, replete with references to the life review, higher spiritual beings, who teach and guide, food conjured (summon) up out of thought, and indescribably beautiful meadows, forests, and mountains. Indeed, not only is the ability to travel into the afterlife realm the most universal requirement for being a shaman, but NDEs are often the very catalyst, that thrusts an individual into the role. For instance, the Oglala Sioux, the Seneca, the Siberian Yakut, the South American Guajiro, the Zulu, the Kenyan Kikuyu, the Korean Mu dang, the Indonesian Mentawai Islanders, and the Caribou Eskimo—all have traditions of individuals, who became shamans after a life-threatening illness propelled them headlong into the afterlife realm. However, unlike Western NDEers, for whom such experiences are disorientingly new, these shamanic explorers appear to have a far vaster knowledge of the geography of these subtler realms and are often able to return to them again and again. Why? Kalweit believes, it is because such experiences are a daily reality for such cultures. Whereas our society suppresses any thoughts or mention of death and dying, and has devalued the mystical by defining reality strictly in terms of the material, tribal peoples still have day-to-day contact with the psychic nature of reality. Thus, they have a better understanding of the rules, that govern these inner realms, says Kalweit, and are much more skilled at navigating their territories. That these inner regions, have been well traveled by shamanic peoples, is evidenced by an experience anthropologist Michael Harner had among the Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon. In 1960 the American Museum of Natural History sent Harner on a year-long expedition to study the Conibo, and while there he asked the Amazonian native to tell him about their religious beliefs. They told him, that if he really wished to learn, he had to take a shamanic sacred drink, made from a hallucinogenic plant known as ayahuasca, the "soul vine." He agreed and, after drinking the bitter concoction, had an out-of-body experience, in which he traveled a level of reality, populated by, what appeared to be, the gods and devils of the Conibo's mythology. He saw demons with grinning crocodilian heads. He watched as an "energy-essence" rose up out of his chest and floated toward a dragon-headed ship, manned by Egyptian-style figures with blue-jay heads; and he felt, what he thought was the slow, advancing numbness of his own death. But the most dramatic experience he had during his spirit journey was an encounter with a group of winged, dragonlike beings, that emerged from his spine. After they had crawled out of his body, they "projected" a visual scene in front of him, in which they showed him, what they said, was the "true" history of the Earth. Through a kind of "thought language" they explained, that they were responsible for both the origin and evolution of all life on the planet. Indeed, they resided not only in human beings, but in all life, and had created the multitude of living forms, that populates the Earth, to provide themselves with a hiding place from some undisclosed enemy in outer space (Harner notes, that although the beings were almost like DNA, at the time, 1961, he knew nothing of DNA). After this concatenation (chain) of visions was over, Harner sought out a blind Conibo shaman, noted for his paranormal talents, to talk to him about the experience. The shaman, who had made many excursions into the spirit world, nodded occasionally, as Harner related the events, that had befallen him, but when he told the old man about the dragonlike beings and their claim, that they were the true masters of the Earth, the shaman smiled with amusement.
"Oh, they are always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness" he corrected. "I was stunned" says Harner. "What I had experienced was already familiar to this barefoot, blind shaman.
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Known to him from his own explorations of the same hidden world, into which I had ventured." However, this was not the only shock Earner received. He also recounted his experience to two Christian missionaries, who lived nearby, and was intrigued, when they too seemed to know, what he was talking about. After
he finished, they told him, that some of his descriptions were virtually identical to certain passages in the "Book of Revelation", passages that Harner, an atheist, had never read. So it seems, that the old Conibo shaman perhaps was not the only individual to have traveled the same ground, Harner later and more falteringly covered. Some of the visions and "trips to heaven", described by Old and New Testament prophets, may also have been shamanic journeys into the inner realm. Is it possible, that what we have been viewing as quaint folklore and charming but naive mythology, are actually sophisticated accounts of the cartography of the subtler levels of reality? Kalweit, for one, believes the answer is an emphatic yes. "In light of the revolutionary findings of recent research into the nature of dying and death, we can no longer look upon tribal religions and their ideas about the World of the Dead as limited conceptions," he says. "[Rather] the shaman should be considered, as a most up-to-date and knowledgeable psychologist."

An Undeniable Spiritual Radiance

One last piece of evidence of the reality of the NDE is the transformative effect, it has on those, who experience it. Researchers have discovered, that NDEers are almost always profoundly changed by their journey to the beyond. They become happier, more optimistic, more easygoing, and less concerned with material possessions. Most striking of all, their capacity to love expands enormously. Aloof husbands suddenly become warm and affectionate, workaholics start relaxing and devoting time to their families, and introverts become extroverts. These changes are often so dramatic, that people, who know the NDEer frequently remark, that he or she has become an entirely different person. There are even cases on record of criminals, completely reforming their ways, and fire-and-brimstone preachers, replacing their message of damnation with one of unconditional love and compassion. NDEers also become much more spiritually oriented. They return not only firmly convinced of the immortality of the human soul, but also with a deep and abiding sense, that the universe is compassionate and intelligent, and this loving presence is always with them. However, this awareness does not necessarily result in their becoming more religious. Like Sri Aurobindo, many NDEers stress the importance of the distinction between religion and spirituality, and assert, that it is the latter (spirituality), that has blossomed into greater fullness in their lives, not the former. Indeed, studies show, that following their experience, NDEers display an increased openness to ideas outside their own religious background, such as reincarnation and Eastern religions. This widening of interests frequently extends to other areas as well. For instance, NDEers often develop a marked fascination for the types of subjects, discussed in this book, in particular psychic phenomena and the new physics. One NDEer, investigated by Ring, for example, was a driver of heavy equipment, who displayed no interest in books or academic pursuits prior to his experience. However, during his NDE he had a vision of total knowledge, and although he was unable to recall the content of the vision, after he recovered, various physics' terms started popping into his head. One morning not long after his experience, he blurted out the word quantum. Later he announced cryptically, "Max Planck—you'll be hearing about him in the near future," and as time continued to pass, fragments of equations and mathematical symbols began to surface in his thoughts. Neither he, nor his wife knew, what the word quantum meant, or who Max Planck (widely viewed as the founding father of quantum physics) was, until the man went to a library and looked the words up. But after discovering, that he was not talking gibberish, he started to read voraciously, not only books on physics, but also on parapsychology, metaphysics, and higher consciousness; and he even enrolled in college, as a physics major. The man's wife wrote a letter to Ring, trying to describe her husband's transformation: "Many times he says a word, he has never heard before in our reality—it might be a foreign word of a different language—but l e a r n s...it in relationship to the "light" theory.... He talks about things faster, than the speed of light and it's hard for me to understand, when [he] picks up a book on physics, he already knows the answer and seems to feel more ..."
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The man also started developing various psychic abilities after his experience, which is not uncommon among NDEers. In 1982 Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and lANDS's director of research, gave sixty-nine NDEers a questionnaire, designed to study this issue, and he found, that there was an increase in virtually all of the psychic and psi-related phenomena, he assessed." Phyllis Atwater, an Idaho housewife, who became an NDE researcher, following her own transformative NDE, has interviewed dozens of NDEers and has obtained similar findings. 'Telepathy and healing gifts are common," she states.
"So is 'remembering' the future. Time and space stop, and you live in a future sequence in detail. Then, when the event occurs, you recognize it." Moody believes, that the profound and positive identity changes, such individuals undergo, is the most compelling evidence, that NDEs are actually journeys into some spiritual level of reality. Ring agrees. "[At the core of the NDE] we find an absolute and undeniable spiritual radiance," he says. "This spiritual core is so awesome and overwhelming, that the person is at once and forever thrust into an entirely new mode of being." NDE researchers are not the only individuals, who are beginning to accept the existence of this dimension and the spiritual component of the human race. Nobelist Brian Josephson, himself a longtime meditator, is also convinced, that there are subtler levels of reality, levels, that can be accessed through meditation, and where, quite possibly, one travels after death. At a 1985 symposium on the possibility of life beyond biological death, held at Georgetown University and convened by U. S. Senator Claiborne Pell, physicist Paul Davies expressed a similar openness.
"We are all agreed that, at least insofar as human beings are concerned, mind is a product of matter, or put more accurately, mind finds expression through matter (specifically our brains). The lesson of the quantum is, that matter can only achieve concrete, well-defined existence in conjunction with mind. Clearly, if mind is pattern, rather than substance, then it is capable of many different representations." Even psychoneuroimmunologist Candace Pert, another participant at the symposium, was receptive to the idea. "I think it is important to realize, that information is stored in the brain, and it is conceivable to me, that this information could transform itself into some other realm. Where does the information go after the destruction of the molecules (the mass) that compose it?"
Matter can neither be created, nor destroyed, and perhaps biological information flow cannot just disappear at death and must be transformed into another realm"
she says. Is it possible, that what Bohm has called the implicate level of reality, is actually the realm of the spirit, the source of the spiritual radiance, that has trans
figured the mystics of all ages? Bohm himself does not dismiss the idea. The implicate domain "could equally well be called "Idealism, Spirit, Consciousness"
he states with typical matter-of-factness. "The separation of the two—matter and spirit—is an abstraction. The ground is always one."

Who Are the Beings of Light?

Because most of the above remarks were made by physicists and not theologians, one cannot help, but wonder, if perhaps, the interest in new physics, displayed by Ring's NDEer, is an indication of something deeper. If, as Bohm suggests, physics is beginning to make inroads in areas, that were once exclusively the province of the mystic, is it possible, that these encroachments have already been anticipated by the beings, who inhabit the near-death realm? Is that why NDEers are given an insatiable hunger for such knowledge? Are they, and by proxy, the rest of the human race, being prepared for some coming confluence between science and the spiritual? We will explore this possibility a little later. First, another question must be asked. If the existence of this higher dimension is no longer at issue, then what are its parameters? More specifically, who are the beings, that inhabit it, and what is their society, dare one say their civilization, really like? These are, of course, difficult questions to answer. When Whitton tried to find out the identity of the beings, who counseled people in the between-life state, he found the answer elusive. "The impression my subjects gave—the ones, who could answer the question—was, that these were entities, who had completed their cycle of incarnations here" he says. After hundreds of journeys into the inner realm, and after interviewing dozens of other talented fellow OBEers on the matter, Monroe has also come up empty-handed. "Whatever they may be, [these beings] have the ability to radiate a warmth of friendliness, that evokes complete trust"
he observes.
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"Perceiving our thoughts is absurdly easy for [them]." And "the entire history of humankind and earth is available to them in the most minute detail." But Monroe, too, confesses ignorance, when it comes to the ultimate identity of these nonphysical entities, save that their first order of business appears to be "totally solicitous (concerned) as to the well-being of the human beings, with whom they are associated."
Not muck more can be said about the civilizations of these subtle realms, save that individuals, who are privileged enough to visit them, universally report, seeing many vast and celestially beautiful cities there. NDEers, yogic adepts, and ayahuasca-using shamans—all describe these mysterious metropolises with remarkable consistency. The twelfth-century Sufis were so familiar with them, that they even gave, several of them, names. The most notable feature of these great cities is, that they are brilliantly luminous. They are also frequently described as foreign in architecture, and so sublimely beautiful, that, like all of the other features of these implicate dimensions, words fail to convey their grandeur. In describing one such city, Swedenborg said, that it was a place "of staggering architectural design, so beautiful, that you would say, this is the home and the source of the art itself." People, who visit these cities, also frequently assert, that they have an unusual number of schools and other buildings, associated with the pursuit of knowledge. Most of Whitton's subjects recalled spending, at least some time, hard at work in vast halls of learning, equipped with libraries and seminar rooms, while in the between-life state. Many NDEers also report being shown "schools," "libraries," and "institutions of higher learning" during their experiences. And one can even find references to great cities, devoted to learning and reachable only by journeying into "the hidden depths of the mind" in eleventh century Tibetan texts. Edwin Bernbaum, a Sanskrit scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, believes, that James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon, in which he created the fictional community of Shangri-La, was actually inspired by one of these Tibetan legends. The only problem is, that in an imaginal realm such descriptions don't mean very much. One can never be sure, whether the spectacular architectural structures, NDEers encounter, are realities or just allegorical phantasms. For instance, both Moody and Ring have reported cases, in which NDEers said, that the buildings of higher learning, they visited, were not just devoted to knowledge, but were literally built out of knowledge. This curious choice of words suggests, that perhaps visits to these edifices are actually encounters with something, so beyond human conception—perhaps a dynamic living cloud of pure knowledge, or what information becomes, as Pert puts it, after it has been transformed into another realm—that translating it into a hologram of a building or library, is the only way the human mind can process it. The same is true of the beings, one encounters in the subtler dimensions.
We can never know from their appearance alone, what they really are. For example, George Russell, a well-
known-turn-of-the century Irish Seer and an extraordinarily talented OBEer, encountered many "beings of light" during, what he called, his journeys into the "inner world." When asked once during an interview to describe, what these beings looked like, he stated: "The first of these I saw, I remember very clearly, and the manner of its appearance: there was at first a dazzle of light, and then I saw, that this came from the heart of a tall figure with a body, apparently shaped out of half-transparent or opalescent air, and throughout the body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the centre. Around the head of this being and through its waving luminous hair, which was blown all about the body like living strands of gold, there appeared flaming wing-like auras. From the being itself light seemed to stream outwards in every direction; and the effect, left on me after the vision, was one of extraordinary lightness, joyousness, or ecstasy. Intriguingly, I have met several other individuals, usually people with more, than normal psychic ability, who have also had these dreams (one, a talented Texas clairvoyant named Jim Gordon, was so baffled by the experience, that he often asked his nonplussed mother, why he had to go to school twice, once during the day with all the other children, and once at night, while he slept). It is relevant to mention here, that Monroe and numerous other OBE researchers believe, that flying dreams are actually just poorly remembered OBEs, making me wonder, if perhaps some of us, at least, are visiting these incorporeal schools, even while we are alive. If anyone, reading this book, has also had such experiences, I would be very interested in hearing about them."
Throughout my high-school and college years I had vivid and frequent dreams, that I was attending classes on spiritual subjects at a strangely beautiful university in some sublime and otherworldly place. These were not anxiety dreams about going to school, but incredibly pleasant flying dreams, in which I floated weightlessly to lectures on the human energy field and reincarnation. During these dreams I sometimes encountered people, I had known in this life, but who had died, and even people, who identified themselves, as souls about to be reborn.
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On the other hand, Monroe asserts, that once he has been in the presence of one of these nonphysical entities for a while, it discards its appearance and he perceives nothing, although he continues to sense "the radiation, that is the entity." Again the question can be asked:" When a journeyer to the inner dimensions encounters a Being of light, is that Being a reality or just an allegorical phantasm?" The answer is, of course, that it is a bit of both, for in a holographic universe all appearances are illusions, hologramlike images, constructed by the interaction of the consciousness present, but illusions based, as Pribram says, on something, that is there. Such are the dilemmas one faces in a universe, that appears to us in explicate form, but always has its source in something ineffable, in the implicate. We can take heart in the fact, that the hologramlike images, our minds construct in the afterlife realm, appear to bear at least some relationship to the something, that is there. When we encoun
ter a disembodied cloud of pure knowledge, we convert it into a school or library. When an NDEer meets a woman, with whom he has had a love/hate relationship,
he sees her as half rose, half cobra, a symbol, that still conveys the quintessence of her character; and when travelers in the subtler realms encounter helpful, non
physical consciousnesses, they see them as luminous ...beings. As for the ultimate identity of these beings, we can deduce from their behavior, that they are older, wiser, and possess some deep and loving connection to the human species, but beyond this, the question remains unanswered, as to whether they are ... the souls of human beings, who have finished reincarnating, or something, that is altogether beyond human comprehension. To speculate further would be presumptuous, in that it would not only be tackling a question, that thousands of years of human history have failed to resolve, but would also ignore Sri Aurobindo's warning against turning spiritual understandings into religious ones. As science gathers more evidence, the answer will most assuredly become clearer, but until then, the question of, who and what these beings are, remains open.

The Omnijective Universe

The hereafter is not the only realm, in which we can encounter hologramlike apparitions, sculptured by our beliefs. It appears, that on occasion we can even have such experiences at our own level of existence. For example, philosopher Michael Grosso believes, that miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary may also be hologram
like projections, created by the collective beliefs of the human race. One "Marian" vision, that is especially holographic in flavor is the well-known appearance of the Virgin in Knock, Ireland, in 1879. On that occasion fourteen people saw three glowing and eerily motionless figures, consisting of Mary, Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist (identified, because he closely resembled a statue of the saint in a nearby village), standing in a meadow next to the local church. These brilliantly luminous figures were so real, that when witnesses approached, they could even read the lettering on a book St. John was holding. But, when one of the women present tried to embrace the Virgin, her arms closed on empty air. "The figures appeared so full and lifelike, I could not understand, why my hands could not feel, what was so plain and distinct to my sight" the woman later wrote. Another impressively holographic Marian vision is the equally famous appearance of the Virgin in Zeitoun, Egypt.
The sightings began in 1968, when two Moslem automobile mechanics saw a luminous apparition of Mary standing on the ledge of the central dome of a Coptic church in the poor Cairo suburb. For the next three years glowing three-dimensional images of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child appeared weekly over the church, sometimes hovering in midair for as long, as six hours. Unlike the figures at Knock, the Zeitoun apparitions moved about and waved at the crowds of people, who regularly gathered to see them. However, they too had many holographic aspects. Their appearance was always heralded by a brilliant flash of light. Like holograms shifting from their frequency aspects and slowly coming into focus, they were at first amorphous and slowly coalesced into human shape. They were often accompanied by doves "formed of pure light", that soared for great distances over the crowd, but never flapped their wings. Most telling of all, after three years of manifestations and as interest in the phenomenon started to wane, the Zeitoun figures also waned, becoming hazier and hazier, until, in their last several appearances, they were little more, than clouds of luminous fog. Nonetheless, during their peak, the figures were seen by literally hundreds of thousands of witnesses and were extensively photographed. "I've interviewed quite a number of these people, and when you hear them talk about, what they saw, you can't get rid of the feeling, that they're describing some sort of holographic projection," says Grosso.
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In his thought-provoking book "The Final Choice" Grosso says, that after studying the evidence, he is convinced, that such visions are not appearances of the historical Mary, but are actually psychic holographic projections, created by the collective unconscious. Interestingly, not all of the Marian apparitions are silent. Some, like the manifestations at Fatima and Lourdes, speak, and when they do, their message is invariably a warning of impending apocalypse, if we mortals do not mend our ways. Grosso interprets this as evidence, that the human collective unconscious is deeply disturbed by the violent impact, modern science has had on human life and on the ecology of the earth. Our collective dreams are, in essence, warning us of the possibility of our own self-destruction. Others have also agreed, that belief in Mary is the motivating force, that causes these projections to coalesce into being. For instance, Rogo points out, that in 1925, while the Coptic church, that became the site of the Zeitoun manifestations, was being built, the philanthropist, responsible for its construction, had a dream, in which the Virgin told him, she would appear at the church as soon, as it was completed. She did not appear at the prescribed time, but the prophecy was well known in the community. Thus "there existed a forty-
year-old tradition, that a Marian visitation would eventually take place at the church," nays Rogo. "These preoccupations may have gradually built up a psychic 'blue
print' of the Virgin within the church itself, i. e., an ever-increasing pool of psychic energy, created by the thoughts of the Zeitounians, which in 1968 became so high-pitched, that an image of the Virgin Mary burst into physical reality!"
In previous writings I, too, have offered a similar explanation of Marian visions. There is evidence, that some UFOs may also be some kind of hologramlike phenomen
on. When people first started reporting sightings of, what appeared to be spacecraft from other planets in the late 1940s, researchers, who delved deeply enough into the reports to realize, that at least some of them had to be taken seriously, assumed, that they were exactly, what they appeared to be—glimpses of intelligently guided crafts from more advanced and probably extraterrestrial civilizations. However, as encounters with UFOs become more widespread, especially those, involving contact with UFO occupants—and data accumulates, it becomes increasingly apparent to many researchers, that these so-called spacecraft are not extraterrestrial in origin. Some of the features of the phenomenon, that indicate, they are not extraterrestrial, include the following.
First, there are too many sightings; literally thousands of encounters with UFOs and their occupants have been documented, so many, that it is difficult to believe, they could all be actual visits from other planets.
Second, UFO occupants often do not possess traits, one would expect in a truly extraterrestrial lifeform; too many of them are described as humanoid beings, who breathe our air, display no fear of contracting earthly viruses, are well adapted to the earth's gravity and the sun's electromagnetic emissions, display recognizab
le emotions in their faces, and talk our language, all of which are possible, but unlikely traits in truly extraterrestrial visitors.
Third, they do not behave as extraterrestrial visitors. Instead of making the proverbial landing on the White House lawn, they appear to farmers and stranded motorists. They chase jets, but don't attack. They dart around in the sky, allowing dozens and sometimes hundreds of witnesses to see them, but they show no interest in making any formal contact. And often, when they contact individuals, their behavior still seems illogical. For instance, one of the most commonly reported types of contact is that, which involve some sort of medical examination. And yet, arguably, a civilization, that possesses the technological capability to travel almost incomprehensible tracts of outer space, would most assuredly possess the scientific wherewithal to obtain such information, without any physical contact at all or, at the very least, without having to abduct the scores of people, who appear to be legitimate victims of this mysterious phenomenon. Finally, and most curious of all, UFOs do not even behave, as physical objects do. They have been watched on radar screens to make instant ninety-degree-angle turns, while traveling at enormous speeds—an antic, that would rip a physical object apart. They can change size, instantly vanish into nothingness, appear out of nowhere, change color, and even change shape (traits, that are also displayed by their occupants). In short, their behavior is not at all, what one would expect from a physical object, but of something quite different, something, with which we have become more, than a little familiar in this book. As astrophysicist Dr. Jacques Vallee, one of the world's most respected UFO researchers and the model for the character LaCombe in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, stated recently:"It is the behavior of an image, or a holographic projection." As the nonphysical and hologramlike qualities of UFOs become increasingly apparent to researchers, some have concluded, that rather, than being from other star systems,
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UFOs are actually visitors from other dimensions, or levels of reality {it is important to note, that not all researchers agree with this point of view, and some remain convinced, that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin). However, this explanation still does not adequately explain many of the other bizarre aspects of the phenomenon, such as, why UFOs aren't making formal contact, why they behave so absurdly, and so on. Indeed, the inadequacy of the extra dimensional explanation, at least in the terms, in which it was initially couched, only becomes more glaring, as still further unusual aspects of the UFO phenomenon come into focus. One of the more baffling of these is growing evidence, that UFO encounters are less of an objective experience and more of a subjective, or psychological, one. For instance, the well-known "interrupted journey" of Betty and Barney Hill, one of the most thoroughly documented UFO abduction cases on record, seems as if it were an actual alien contact in all ways, except one: the commander of the UFO was dressed in a Nazi uniform, a fact, that does not make sense, if the Hills' abductors were truly visitors from an alien civilization, but it does, if the event was psychological in nature and more akin to a dream or hallucination, experiences, that often contain obvious symbols and disconcerting flaws in logic. Other UFO encounters are even more surreal and dreamlike in character, and in the literature one can find cases, in which UFO entities sing absurd songs or throw strange objects (such as potatoes) at witnesses; cases, that start out as straightforward abductions aboard spacecraft, but end up as hallucinogenic journeys through a series of Dantesque realities; and cases, in which humanoid aliens shapeshift into birds, giant insects, and other phantasmagoric creatures. As early as 1959, and even before, much of this evidence was in, the psychological and archetypal component of the UFO phenomenon, inspired Carl Jung to propose, that "flying saucers" were actually a product of the collective human unconscious and a kind of modern myth in the making. In 1969, and as the mythic dimension of UFO experiences became even clearer, Vallee took the observation a step further. In his landmark book "Passport to Magonia" he points out that, far from being a new phenomenon, UFOs actually appear to be a very old phenomenon in a new guise and greatly resemble various folkloric traditions, from descriptions of elves and gnomes in European countries to medieval accounts of angels to the supernatural beings, described in Native American legends. The absurd behavior of UFO entities is the same, as the mischievous behavior of elves and fairies in Celtic legends, the Norse gods, and the trickster figures among the Native Americans, says Vallee. When stripped to their underlying archetypes, all such phenomena are part of the same vast, pulsating something, a something, that changes its appearance to suit the culture and time period, in which it manifests, but that has been with the human race for a long, long time. What is that something?
In "Passport to Magonia" Vallee provides no substantive answer and says only, that it appears to be intelligent, timeless, and to be the phenomenon, on which all myths are based. What, then, are UFOs and related phenomena? In "Passport to Magonia" Vallee says, that we cannot rule out the possibility, that they are the expression of some extraordinarily advanced nonhuman intelligence, an intelligence so beyond us, that its logic appears to us only as absurdity. But if this is true, how are we to explain the conclusions of mythology experts from Mircea Eliade to Joseph Campbell, that myths are an organic and necessary expression of the human race, as inevitable a human by-product, as language and art? Can we really accept, that the collective human psyche is so barren and jejune, that it developed myths only as a response to another intelligence? And yet, if UFOs and related phenomena are merely psychic projections, how are we to explain the physical traces, they leave behind, the burnt circles and deep impressions found at the sites of landings, the unmistakable tracks they make on radar screens, and the scars and incision marks they leave on the people, on whom they perform their medical examinations? In an article, published in 1976, I proposed, that such phenomena are difficult to categorize, because we are trying to hammer them into a picture of reality, that is fundamentally incorrect. Given, that quantum physics has shown us, that mind and matter are inextricably linked, I suggested, that UFOs and related phenomena are further evidence of this ultimate lack of division between the psychological and physical worlds. They are indeed a product of the collective human psyche, but they are also quite real. Put another way, they are something, the human race has not yet learned to comprehend properly, a phenomenon, that is neither subjective, nor objective, but "omnijective"—a term, I coined to refer to this unusual state of existence (I was unaware at the time, that Corbin had already coined the term, imaginal to describe the same blurred status of reality, only in the context of the mystical experiences of the Sufis). This point of view has become increasingly prevalent among researchers.
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In a recent article Ring argues, that UFO encounters are imaginal experiences and are similar not only to the confrontations with the real, but mind-created world individuals experience during NDEs, but also to the mythic realities, shamans encounter during journeys through the subtler dimensions. They are, in short, further evidence, that reality is a multilayered and mind-generated hologram.
"I'm finding, that I'm drawn more and more to points of view that allow me not only to acknowledge and honor the reality of these different experiences, but also to see the connections between realms that, for the most part, have been studied by different categories of scholars" states Ring. "Shamanism tends to be thrown into anthropology. UFOs tend to be thrown into whatever ufology is. NDEs are studied by parapsychologists and medical people. And Stan Grof studies psychedelic experiences from a transpersonal psychology perspective. I think there's good reason to hope that the imaginal can be, and the holographic might still prove to be, perspectives, that can allow one to see not the identities, but the linkages and commonalities between these different types of experiences." So convinced is Ring of the profound relationship among these at first seemingly disparate phenomena that he has recently obtained a grant to do a comparative study on people who have had UFO encounters and people who have had NDEs. Dr. Peter M. Rojcewicz, a folklorist at the Juilliard School in New York City, has also concluded that UFOs are omnijective. In fact, he believes the time has come for folklorists to realize that probably all of the phenomena discussed by Vallee in "Passport to Magonia" are as real as they are symbolic of processes deep in the human psyche.
"There exists a continuum of experiences where reality and imagination imperceptibly flow into each other" he states. Rojcewicz acknowledges that this continuum is further evidence of the Bohmian unity of all things and feels that, in light of the evidence that such phenomena are imaginal/omnijective, it is no longer defensible for folklorists to treat them simply as beliefs. Numerous other researchers, including Vallee, Grosso, and Whitley Strieber, author of the bestselling book "Communion" and one of the most famous and articulate victims of a UFO abduction, have also acknowledged the seeming omnijective nature of the phenomenon. As Strieber states, encounters with UFO beings "may be our first true quantum discovery in the large-scale world: the very act of observing it may be creating it as a concrete actuality, with sense, definition, and a consciousness of its own."
In short, there is growing agreement among researchers of this mysterious phenomenon that the imaginal is not confined to the afterlife realm, but has spilled over into the seeming solidity of our stick-sand-stones world. No longer confined to the visions of shamans, the old gods have sailed their celestial barks right up to the doorstep of the computer generation, only instead of dragon-headed ships their vessels are spaceships, and they have traded in their blue-jay heads for space helmets. Perhaps we should have anticipated this spillover long ago, this merging of the Land of the Dead with our own realm, for as Orpheus, the poet-musician of Greek mythology, once warned:"The gates of Pluto must not be unlocked, within is a people of dreams." As significant as this realization is—that the universe is not objective but omnijective, that just beyond the pale of our own safe neighborhood lies a vast otherness, a numinous landscape (more properly a mindscape) as much a part of our own psyche as it is terra incognita— it still does not shed light on the deepest mystery of all. As Carl Raschke, a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, notes, "In the omnijective cosmos, where UFOs have their place alongside quasars and salamanders, the issue of the veridical, or hallucinatory, status of glowing, circular apparitions, becomes moot. The problem is not whether they exist, or in what sense they exist, but what ultimate aim they serve." In other words, what is the final identity of these beings? Again, as with entities encountered in the near-death realm, there are no clearcut answers. On one end of the spectrum, researchers such as Ring and Grosso lean toward the idea that, despite their impingements in the world of matter, they are more psychic projection than nonhuman intelligence. Grosso, for instance, thinks that, like Marian visions, they are further evidence that the psyche of the human race is in a state of unrest. As he states, "UFOs and other extraordinary phenomena are manifestations of a disturbance in the collective unconscious of the human species." On the other end of the spectrum are those researchers who maintain that, despite their archetypal characteristics, UFOs are more alien intelligence than psychic projection. For example, Raschke believes that UFOs are "a holographic materialization from a conjugate dimension of the universe" and that this interpretation "certainly must take precedence over the psychic projection hypothesis, which flounders when one examines thoughtfully the astounding, vivid, complex, and consistent features of the 'aliens' and their 'spaceships' described by abductees." Vallee is also in this camp: "I believe that the UFO phenomenon is one of the ways through which an alien form of intelligence of incredible complexity is communicating with us symbolically. There is no indication that it is extraterrestrial. Instead, there is mounting evidence, that i t . . . [comes from] other dimensions beyond spacetime; from a multiverse which is all around us, and of which we have stubbornly refused to consider in spite of the evidence available to us for centuries." As for my own feelings, I believe that probably no single explanation can account for all of the varied aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Given the apparent vastness of the subtler levels of reality, it is easy for me to believe that there are no doubt countless nonphysical species in the higher vibratory realms. Although the abundance of UFO sightings may bode against their being extraterrestrial—given the obstacle posed by the immense interstellar distances separating the Earth from the other stars in the galaxy—in a holographic universe, a universe in which there may be an infinity of realities occupying the same space as our own world, it ceases not only to be a sticking point, but may in fact be evidence of just how unfathomably abundant with intelligent life the superhologram is. The truth is that we simply do not have the information necessary to assess how many nonphysical species are sharing our own space. Although the physical cosmos may turn out to be an ecological Sahara, the spaceless and timeless expanses of the inner cosmos may be as rich with life as the rain forest and the coral reef. After all, research into NDEs and shamanic experiences has so far taken us only just inside the borders of this cloud-shrouded realm. We do not yet know how large its continents are or how many oceans and mountain ranges it contains. And if we are being visited by beings who are as insubstantial and plastic in form as the bodies OBEers find themselves in after they have exteriorized, it is not at all surprising that they might appear in a chameleonlike multitude of shapes. In fact, their actual appearance may be so beyond our comprehension that it may be our own holographically organized minds that give them these shapes. Just as we convert the beings of light encountered during NDEs into religious historical personages, and clouds of pure information into libraries and institutions of learning, our minds may also be sculpting the outward appearance of the UFO phenomenon.
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It is interesting to note that if this is the case, it means that the true reality of these beings is apparently so transmundane and strange that we have to plumb the deepest regions of our folk memories and mythological unconscious to find the necessary symbols to give them form. It also means that we must be exceedingly careful in interpreting their actions. For example, the medical examinations that are the centerpiece of so many UFO abductions may be only a symbolic representation of what is going on. Rather than probing our physical bodies, these nonphysical intelligences actually may be probing some portion of us for which we currently have no labels, perhaps the subtle anatomy of our energy selves or even our very souls. Such are the problems one faces if the phenomenon is indeed an omnijective manifestation of a nonhuman intelligence. On the other hand, if it is possible for the faith of the citizens of Knock and Zeitoun to cause luminous images of the Virgin to coalesce into existence, for the minds of physicists to dabble around with the reality of the neutrino, and for yogis such as Sai Baba to materialize physical objects out of thin air, it only stands to reason that we would also find ourselves awash with holographic projections of our beliefs and mythologies. At least some anomalous experiences may fall into this category. For instance, history tells us that Constantine and his soldiers saw an enormous flaming cross in the sky, a phenomenon that seems to be nothing more than a psychic exteriorization of the emotions the army responsible for nothing short of the Christianization of the pagan world was feeling on the eve of their historic undertaking. The wellknown manifestation of the Angels of Mons, in which hundreds of World War I British soldiers saw an immense apparition of Saint George and a squadron of angels in the sky while fighting what was - at first a losing battle at the front, in Mons, Belgium, also appears to fall into the category of psychic projection. It is clear to me that what we are calling UFO and other folkloric experiences are really a wide range of phenomena and probably include all of the above. I have also long been of the opinion that these two explanations are not mutually exclusive. It may be that Constantine's flaming cross was also a manifestation of an extradimensional intelligence. In other words, when our collective beliefs and emotions become high-pitched enough to create a psychic projection, perhaps what we are really doing is opening a doorway between this world and the next. Perhaps the only time these intelligences can appear and interact with us is when our own potent beliefs create a kind of psychic niche for them. Another concept from the new physics may be relevant here. After acknowledging, that consciousness is the agent that allows a subatomic particle such as an electron to pop into existence, we should not therefore jump to the conclusion that we are the sole agents in this creative process, cautions University of Texas physicist John Wheeler. We are creating subatomic particles and hence the entire universe, says Wheeler, but they are also creating us. Each creates the other in what he calls a "self-reference cosmology." Seen in this light, UFO entities may very well be archetypes from the collective unconscious of the human race, but we may also be archetypes in their collective unconscious. We may be as much a part of their deep psychic processes as they are of ours. Strieber has also echoed this point and says that the universe of the beings who abducted him and our own are "spinning each other together" in an act of cosmic communion. The spectrum of events we are lumping into the broad category of UFO encounters may also include phenomena with which we are not even yet familiar. For instance, researchers who believe the phenomenon is some kind of psychic projection invariably assume that it is a projection of the collective human mind. However, as we have seen in this book, in a holographic universe we can no longer view consciousness as confined solely to the brain. The fact that Carol Dryer was able to communicate with my spleen and tell me that it was upset because I had yelled at it indicates that other organs in our body also possess their own unique forms of mentality. Psychoneuroimmunologists say the same about the cells in our immune system, and according to Bohm and other physicists, even subatomic particles possess this trait. As outlandish as it sounds, some aspects of UFOs and related phenomena may be projections of these collective mentalities. Certain features of Michael Harner's encounter with the dragonlike beings certainly suggest that he was confronting a kind of visual manifestation of the intelligence of the DNA molecule. In this same vein Strieber has suggested the possibility that UFO beings are what "the force of evolution looks like when it's applied to a conscious mind."
We must remain open to all of these possibilities. In a universe that is conscious right down to its very depths, animals, plants, even matter itself may all be participating in the creation of these phenomena.
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One thing that we do know is that in a holographic universe, a universe in which separateness ceases to exist and the innermost processes of the psyche can spill over and become as much a part of the objective landscape as the flowers and the trees, reality itself becomes little more than a mass shared dream. In the higher dimensions of existence, these dreamlike aspects become even more apparent, and indeed numerous traditions have commented on this fact. The "Tibetan Book of the Dead" repeatedly stresses the dreamlike nature of the afterlife realm, and this is also, of course, why the Australian aborigines refer to it as the dreamtime. Once we accept this notion, that reality at all levels is omnijective and has the same ontological status as a dream, the question becomes: "Whose dream is it?" Of the religious and mythological traditions that address this question, most give the same answer, It is the dream of a single divine intelligence... The Hindu Vedas and yogic texts assert again and again that the universe is ... dream. In ... the sentiment is summed up in the oft repeated saying, we are all thoughts in the mind ... or as the poet Keats put it, we are all part of ... "long immortal dream." But are we being dreamed by a single divine intelligence, or are we being dreamed by the collective consciousness of all things— by all the electrons, Z particles, butterflies, neutron stars, sea cucumbers, human and nonhuman intelligences in the universe? Here again we collide headlong into the bars of our own conceptual limitations, for in a holographic universe this question is meaningless. We cannot ask if the part is creating the whole, or the whole is creating the part because the part is the whole. So whether we call the collective consciousness of all things or simply "the consciousness of all things, " it doesn't change the situation. The universe is sustained by an act of such stupendous and ineffable creativity that it simply cannot be reduced to such terms. Again it is a self-reference cosmology. Or as the Kalahari Bushmen so eloquently put it: "The dream is dreaming itself."
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Holomovement - Holographic Thoughts

The basic idea came to Bohm in the early 1970s, during an extraordinary period of creativity at Birkbeck College in London. The holomovement is one of a number of new concepts, which Bohm presented in an effort to move beyond the mechanistic formulations of the standard interpretation of the quantum theory and relativity theory. Along with such concepts as undivided wholeness and the implicate order, the holomovement is central to his formulation of a “new order” in physics which would move beyond the mechanistic order.

Early Development of the Idea

In an essay published in 1971, Bohm carried continued his earlier critique ...Bohm came instead to embrace a concept of reality as a dynamic movement of the whole: “In this view, there is no ultimate set of separately existent entities, out of which all is supposed to be constituted. Rather, unbroken and undivided movement is taken as a primary notion”. He then goes on to paraphrases da Vinci to the effect that movement gives shape to all forms and structure gives order to movement, but adds modern insight when he suggests, that “a deeper and more extensive inner movement creates, maintains, and ultimately dissolves structure.”
In article from the same period, “On the Metaphysics and Movement of Universal Fitting,” Bohm identifies some of the inadequacies of the mechanistic model, particularly the inability to predict the future movement of complex wholes from the initial conditions, and suggests instead a focus on a general laws of interaction governing the relationship of the parts within a whole: “What we are doing in this essay is to consider what it means to turn this prevailing metaphysics of science ‘upside down’ by exploring the notion that a kind of art—a movement of fitting together—is what is universal, both in nature and in human activities”. This movement of the whole is what he calls the holomovement.

Undivided Wholeness

The term holomovement is one of many neologisms, which Bohm coined in his search to overcome the limitations of the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This approach involved not just a critique of the assumptions of the standard model, but a set of new concepts in physics, which move beyond the conventional language of quantum mechanics. Wholeness and the Implicate Order is the culmination of these reflections, and an attempt to show how the new insights provided by a post-Copenhagen model can be extended beyond physics into other domains, such as life, consciousness, and cosmology. The holomove-
ment concept is introduced in incremental steps. It is first presented under the aspect of wholeness in the lead essay, called “Fragmentation and Wholeness.” There Bohm states the major claim of the book: “The new form of insight can perhaps best be called Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement” (Bohm, 1980, 11). This view implies that flow is, in some sense, prior to that of the ‘things’ that can be seen to form and dissolve in this flow. He notes how “each relatively autonomous and stable structure is be understood not as something independently and permanently existent, but rather as a product, that has been formed in the whole flowing movement and what will ultimately dissolve back into this movement. How it forms and maintains itself, then, depends on its place function within the whole”. For Bohm, movement is what is primary; and what seem like permanent structures are only relatively autonomous sub-entities, which emerge out of the whole of flowing movement and then dissolve back into it an unceasing process of becoming.

All is Flux
(Flux - fluctuation, instability, change, alteration, modification, flow, fluidity, movement, motion, transition)

“Not only is everything changing, but all is flux. That is to say, what is the process of becoming itself, while all objects, events, entities, conditions, structures, etc., are forms, that can be abstracted from this process”. His notion of the whole is s not a static Paramedian oneness outside of space and time. Rather, the wholeness to which he refers here is more akin to the Heraclitian flux, or to the process philosophy of Whitehead. The formal presentation of the concept comes late in the book. After discussing the concepts of undivided wholeness and the Implicate and Explicate Orders, he presents the formal definition under the subheading
“The Holomovement and its Aspects.” Consistent with his own earlier Causal Interpretation, and more generally with the de Broglie-Schroedinger approach, he posits, that a new kind of description would be appropriate for giving primary relevance to the Implicate Order. Using the hologram as a model {link to holographic universe], Bohm argues, that the Implicate Order is enfolded within a more generalized wave structure of the Universe-in-Motion, or what he calls the Holomovement. To generalize so as to emphasize undivided wholeness, we shall say that what ‘carries’ an implicate order is the holomovement, which is an unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases, we can abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g. light, electrons, sound, etc.), but more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and are inseparable. Thus in its totality, the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable way at all. It is not required to conform to any particular order, or to be bounded by any particular measure. Thus, the holomovement is undefinable and immesasurable.”
As the interconnected totality of all there is, the holomovement is of potentially an infinite order, and cannot be pinned down to any one notion of order. It is important to note that Bohm’s concepts of the Implicate Order and the holomovement are significant departures from the earlier “Hidden Variables” interpretation, and the conceptual framework is somewhat different from that articulated in the Bohm-Vigier interpretation and the in interpretations of the proponents of “Bohmian Mechanics [link],” where the general assumption is of an underlying Dirac ether (see F. David Peat’s Introduction to Quantum Implications). While the concept of the holomove
ment has been criticized as being “metaphysical,” it is really more subtle (finely woven), while at the same time encompassing the whole range of interconnected physical phenomena.

The Law of the Holomovement: Holonomy

The starting point for Bohm’s articulation of what he means by a “new order in physics” is his notion of wholeness. Thus crucial for understanding the holomovement is his notion of how interconnected phenomena are woven together in an underlying unified fabric of physical law. In the following section, called “Law in the Holomovement,” he takes up the question of order, and the laws of organization which relate the parts to each other and to the whole. This is what he calls the “law of the whole,” or holonomy. Rather than starting with the parts and explaining the whole in terms of the parts, Bohm’s point of view is just the opposite: he starts with a notion of undivided wholeness and derives the parts as abstractions from the whole. The essential point is that the Implicate Order and the holomovement imply a way of looking at reality not merely in terms of external interactions between things, but in terms of the internal (enfolded) relationships among things: “The relationships constituting the fundamental law are between the enfolded structures that interweave and inter-penetrate each other, through the whole of space, rather than between the abstracted and separated forms that are manifest to the senses (and to our instruments)”.

Extension to Life, Consciousness and Cosmology

In the final chapter of the book, “The Enfolding-Unfolding Universe and Consciousness,” Bohm elaborated further on the need for new notions of order of physics, and set forth a general view, in which totalities are continually forming and dissolving out of the Universal Flux, or what he designates as the Holomovement. He recapitulates: “Our basic proposal was that what is the holomovement, and that everything is to be explained in terms of forms derived from this holomovement. The Implicate Order has its ground in the holomovement which is, as we have seen, vast, rich, and in a state of unending Flux of enfoldment and unfoldment, with laws, most of which are only vaguely known. As such, the holomovement includes not just physical reality, but life, consciousness and cosmology. As Bohm sums it up at the end of the book: “Our overall approach has thus brought together questions of the nature of the cosmos, of matter in general, of life, and of consciousness. All of these have been considered to be projections of a common ground. This we may call the ground of all that is”.

Return to the Dreamtime

Where does the holographic model go from here? Before examining the possible answers, we might want to see where the question has been before. In this book
I have referred to the holographic concept as a new theory, and this is true in the sense that it is the first time it has been presented in a scientific context.
But as we have seen, several aspects of this theory have already been foreshadowed in various ancient traditions. They are not the only such foreshadowings, which is intriguing, for it suggests that others have also found reason to view the universe as holographic, or at least to intuit its holographic qualities. For example, Bohm's idea that the universe can be viewed as the compound of two basic orders, the implicate and the explicate, can be found in many other traditions. The Tibetan Buddhists call these two aspects the void and nonvoid. The nonvoid is the reality of visible objects. The void, like the implicate order, is the birthplace of all things in the universe, which pour out of it in a "boundless flux. " However, only the void is real and all forms in the objective world are illusory, existing merely because of the unceasing flux between the two orders. In turn, the void is described as "subtle" "indivisible" and "free from distinguishing characteristics." Because it is seamless totality it cannot be described in words. Properly speaking, even the nonvoid cannot be described in words because it, too is a totality, in which consciousness and matter and all other things are indissoluble and whole. Herein lies a paradox, for despite its illusory nature the nonvoid still contains "an infinitely vast complex of universes." And yet its indivisible aspects are always present. As the Tibet scholar John Blofeld states, "In a universe thus composed, everything interpenetrates, and is interpenetrated by, everything else; as with the void, so with the non-void—the part is the whole." The Tibetans prefigured some of Pribram's thinking as well. According to Milarepa, an eleventh-century Tibetan yogin and the most renowned of the Tibetan Buddhist saints, the reason we are unable to perceive the void directly is because our unconscious mind (or, as Milarepa puts it, our "inner consciousness") is far too "conditioned" in its perceptions. This conditioning not only keeps us from seeing what he calls "the border between mind and matter, " or what we would call the frequency domain, but also causes us to form a body for ourselves when we are in the between-life state and no longer have a body.
"In the invisible realm of the heavens... the illusory mind is the great culprit, " writes Milarepa, who counseled his disciples to practice "perfect seeing and contemplation" in order to realize this "Ultimate Reality." Zen Buddhists also recognize the ultimate indivisibility of reality, and indeed the main objective of Zen is to learn how to perceive this wholeness. In their book Games Zen Masters Play, and in words that could have been lifted right from one of Bohm's papers, Robert Sohl
and Audrey Carr state"To confuse the indivisible nature of reality with the conceptual pigeonholes of language is the basic ignorance from which Zen seeks to free us. The ultimate answers to existence are not to be found in intellectual concepts and philosophies, however sophisticated, but rather in a level of direct nonconceptual experience [of reality]."
The Hindus call the implicate level of reality Brahman. Brahman is formless but is the birthplace of all forms in visible reality, which appear out of it and then enfold back into it in endless flux. Like Bohm, who says that the implicate order can just as easily be called spirit, the Hindus sometimes personify this level of reality and say that it is composed of pure consciousness. Thus, consciousness is not only a subtler form of matter, but it is more fundamental than matter; and in the Hindu cosmogony it is matter that has emerged from consciousness, and not the other way around. Or as the Vedas put it, the physical world is brought into being through both the "veiling" and "projecting" powers of consciousness. Because the material universe is only a second-generation reality, a creation of veiled consciousness, the Hindus say that it is transitory and unreal, or maya. As the Svetasvatara Upanishad states, "One should know that Nature is illusion (maya), and that Brahman is the illusion maker. This whole world is pervaded with beings that are parts of it". Similarly, the Kena Upanishad says that Brahman is an uncanny something "which changes its form every moment from human shape to a blade of grass." Because everything unfolds out of the irreducible totality of Brahman, the world is also a seamless whole, say the Hindus, and it is again maya that keeps us from realizing there is ultimately no such thing as separateness." Maya severs the united consciousness so that the object is seen as other than the self and then as split up into the multitudinous objects in the universe, " says the Vedic scholar Sir John Woodroffe. "And there is such objectivity as long as [humanity's] consciousness is veiled or contracted. But in the ultimate basis of experience the divergence has gone, for in it lie, in undifferentiated mass, experiencer, experience, and the experienced." This same concept can be found in Judaic thought. However, despite its illusory nature, it is not complete nothingness, "for every reflection of reality, even remote, broken up and transient, necessarily possesses something of its cause."
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The idea that the creation set into motion by the God of Genesis is an illusion is reflected even in the Hebrew language, for as the Zohar, a thirteenth-century Kabbalistic commentary on the Torah and the most famous of the esoteric Judaic texts, notes, the verb baro, "to create" implies the idea of "creating an illusion." There are many holographic concepts in shamanistic thinking as well. The Hawaiian kahunas say, that everything in the universe is infinitely interconnected and that this interconnectivity can almost be thought of as a web. The shaman, recognizing the interconnectedness of all things, sees himself at the center of this web and thus capable of affecting every other part of the universe (it is interesting to note, that the concept of maya is also frequently likened to a web in Hindu thought). Like Bohm, who says that consciousness always has its source in the implicate, the aborigines believe that the true source of the mind is in the transcendent reality of the dreamtime. Normal people do not realize this and believe that their consciousness is in their bodies. However, shamans know this is not true, and that is why they are able to make contact with the subtler levels of reality. The Dogon people of the Sudan also believe that the physical world is the product of a deeper and more fundamental level of reality and is perpetually flowing out of and then streaming back into this more primary aspect of existence. As one Dogon elder described it:
"To draw up and then return what one had drawn—that is the life of the world." In fact, the implicate/explicate idea can be found in virtually all shamanic traditions. States Douglas Sharon in his book "Wizard of the Four Winds: A Shaman's Story": "Probably the central concept of shamanism, wherever in the world it is found, is the notion, that underlying all the visible forms in the world, animate and inanimate, there exists a vital essence, from which they emerge and by which they are nurtured. Ultimately everything returns to this ineffable, mysterious, impersonal Unknown."

The Candle and the Laser

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Certainly one of the most fascinating properties of a piece of holographic film is the nonlocal way an image is distributed in its surface. As we have seen, Bohm believes the universe itself is also organized in this manner and employs a thought experiment involving a fish and two television monitors to explain why he believes the universe is similarly nonlocal. Numerous ancient thinkers also appear to have recognized, or at least intuited, this aspect of reality. The twelfth century Sufis summed it up by saying simply that "the macrocosm is the microcosm" a kind of earlier version of Blake's notion of seeing the world in a grain of sand. The Greek philosophers Anaximenes of Miletus, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Plato; the ancient Gnostics—all embraced the macrocosm-microcosm idea. After a shamanic vision of the subtler levels of reality the semimythical ancient Egyptian prophet Hermes Trismegistus employed a slightly different phrasing and said that one of the main keys to knowledge was the understanding that "the without is like the within of things; the small is like the large." The medieval alchemists, for whom Hermes Trismegistus became a kind of patron saint, distilled the sentiment into the motto "As above, so below." In talking about the same macrocosm-equals-microcosm idea the Hindu Visvasara Tantra uses somewhat cruder terms and states simply: "What is here is elsewhere." The Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk put an even more nonlocal twist on the same concept. While standing on Harney Peak in the Black Hills he witnessed a "great vision" during which he "saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together as one being." One of the most profound understandings he came away with after this encounter with the ineffable was that Harney Peak was the center of the world. However, this distinction was not limited to Harney Peak, for as Black Elk put it:"Anywhere is the center of the world."
Over twenty-five centuries earlier the Greek philosopher Empedocles brushed up against the same sacred otherness and wrote, that "God is a circle, whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere." Not content with mere words, some ancient thinkers resorted to even more elaborate analogies in their attempt to communicate the holographic properties of reality. To this end the author of the Hindu Avatamsaka Sutra likened the universe to a legendary network of pearls said to hang over the palace of the god Indra and "so arranged that if you look at one [pearl], you see all the others reflect in it."
As the author of the Sutra explained, "In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself, but involves every other object and, in fact, is everything else." Fa-Tsang, the seventh-century founder of the Hua-yen school of Buddhist thought, employed a remarkably similar analogy when trying to communicate the ultimate interconnectedness and interpenetration of all things. Fa-Tsang, who held that the whole cosmos was implicit in each of its parts (and who also believed, that every point in the cosmos was its center), likened the universe to a multidimensional network of jewels, each one reflecting all others ad infinitum. When the empress Wu announced, that she did not understand what Fa-Tsang meant by this image and asked him for further clarification, Fa-Tsang suspended a candle in the middle of a room full of mirrors. This, he told the empress Wu, represented the relationship of the One to the many. Then he took a polished crystal and placed it in the center of the room so that it reflected everything around it. This, he said, showed the relationship of the many to the One. However, like Bohm, who stresses that the universe is not simply a hologram but a holornovement, Fa-Tsang stressed that his model was static and did not reflect the dynamism and constant movement of the cosmic interrelatedness among all things in the universe. In short, long before the invention of the hologram, numerous thinkers had already glimpsed the nonlocal organization of the universe and had arrived at their own unique ways to express this insight. It is worth noting that these attempts, crude as they may seem to those of us who are more technologically sophisticated, may have been far more important than we realize. For instance, it appears that the seventeenth-century German mathematician and philosopher Leibniz was familiar with the Hua-yen school of Buddhist thought. Some have argued that this was why he proposed that the universe is constituted out of fundamental entities he called "monads, " each of which contains a reflection of the whole universe. What is significant is that Leibniz also gave the world integral calculus, and it was integral calculus that enabled Dennis Gabor to invent the hologram.

The Future of the Holographic Idea

And so an ancient idea, an idea that seems to find at least some expression in virtually all of the world's philosophical and metaphysical traditions, comes full circle. But if these ancient understandings can lead to the invention of the hologram, and the invention of the hologram can lead to Bohm and Pribram's formulation of the holographic model, to what new advances and discoveries might the holographic model lead? Already there are more possibilities on the horizon.

HOLOPHONIC SOUND

Drawing on Pribram's holographic model of the brain, Argentinian physiologist Hugo Zuccarelli recently developed a new recording technique that allows one to create what amounts to holograms made out of sound instead of light. Zuccarelli bases his technique on the curious fact that the human ears actually emit sound. Realizing that these naturally occurring sounds were the audio equivalent of the "reference laser" used to recreate a holographic image, he used them as the basis for a revolutionary new recording technique that reproduces sounds that are even more realistic and three- dimensional than those produced through the stereo process. He calls this new kind of sound "holophonic sound." After listening to one of Zuccarelli's holophonic recordings, a reporter for the Times of London wrote recently, "I stole a look at the reassuring numbers on my watch to make sure where I was. People approached from behind me where I knew there was only wall.... By the end of seven minutes I was getting the impression of figures, the embodiment of the voices on the tape. It is a multidimensional 'picture' created by sound." Because Zuccarelli's technique is based on the brain's own holographic way of processing sound, it appears to be as successful at fooling the ear as light holograms are at fooling the eyes. As a result, listeners often move their feet when they hear a recording of someone walking in front of them, and move their heads when they hear what sounds like a match being lit too near to their face (some reportedly even smell the match). Remarkably, because a holophonic recording has nothing to do with conventional stereophonic sound, it maintains its eerie three-dimensionality even when one listens to it through only one side of a headphone.
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The holographic principles involved also appear to explain why people who are deaf in one ear can still locate the source of a sound without moving their heads.
A number of major recording artists, including Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, and Vangelis, have approached Zuccarelli about his process, but because of patent considerations he has not yet disclosed the information necessary for a full understanding of his technique.

UNSOLVED PUZZLES IN CHEMISTRY

Chemist Ilya Prigogine recently noted that Bohm's idea of the implicate-explicate order may help explain certain anomalous phenomena in chemistry. Science has long believed that one of the most absolute rules in the universe is that things always tend toward a greater state of disorder. If you drop a stereo off of the Empire State Building, when it crashes into the sidewalk it doesn't become more ordered and turn into a VCR. It becomes more disordered and turns into a pile of splintered parts. Prigogine has discovered that this is not true for all things in the universe. He points out that, when mixed together, some chemicals develop into a more ordered arrangement, not a more disordered one. He calls these spontaneously appearing ordered systems "dissipative structures" and won a Nobel Prize for unraveling their mysteries. But how can a new and more complex system just suddenly pop into existence?
Put another way, where do dissipative structures come from? Prigogine and others have suggested that, far from materializing out of nowhere, they are an indication of a deeper level of order in the universe, evidence of the implicate aspects of reality becoming explicate. If this is true, it could have profound implications and, among other things, lead to a deeper understanding of how new levels of complexity— such as attitudes and new patterns of behavior—pop into existence in the human consciousness and even how that most intriguing complexity of all, life itself, appeared on the earth several billion years ago.

NEW KINDS OF COMPUTERS

The holographic brain model has also recently been extended into the world of computers. In the past, computer scientists thought that the best way to build a better computer was simply to build a bigger computer. But in the last half decade or so, researchers have developed a new strategy, and instead of building single monolithic machines, some have started connecting scores of little computers together in "neural networks" that more closely resemble the biological structure of the human brain. Recently, Marcus S. Cohen, a computer scientist at New Mexico State University, pointed out that processors that rely on interfering waves of light passing through "multiplexed holographic gratings" might provide an even better analog of the brain's neural structure. Similarly, physicist Dana Z. Anderson of the University of Colorado has recently shown how holographic gratings could be used to build an "optical memory" that exhibits associative recall. As exciting as these developments are, they are still just further refinements of the mechanistic approach to understanding the universe, advances that take place only within the material framework of reality. But as we have seen, the holographic idea's most extraordinary assertion is that the materiality of the universe may be an illusion, and physical reality may be only a small part of a vast and sentient nonphysical cosmos. If this is true, what implications does it have for the future? How do we begin to go about truly penetrating the mysteries of these subtler dimensions?

The Need for a Basic Restructuring of Science

Currently one of the best tools we have for exploring the unknown aspects of reality is science. And yet when it comes to explaining the psychic and spiritual dimensions of human existence, science in the main has repeatedly fallen short of the mark. Clearly, if science is to advance further in these areas, it needs to undergo a basic restructuring, but what specifically might such a restructuring entail? Obviously the first and most necessary step is to accept the existence of psychic and spiritual phenomena. Willis Harman, the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a former senior social scientist at Stanford Research Institute International, feels this acceptance is crucial not only to science, but to the survival of human civilization.
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Moreover, Harman, who has written extensively on the need for a basic restructuring of science, is astonished that this acceptance has not yet taken place. "Why don't we assume that any class of experiences or phenomena that have been reported, through the ages and across cultures, has a face validity that cannot be denied?" he asks. As has been mentioned, at least part of the reason is the longstanding bias Western science has against such phenomena, but the issue is not quite so simple as this. Consider for example the past-life memories of people under hypnosis. Whether these are actual memories of previous lives or not has yet to be proved, but the fact remains, the human unconscious has a natural propensity for generating at least apparent memories of previous incarnations. In general, the orthodox psychiatric community ignores this fact. Why? At first glance the answer would appear to be because most psychiatrists just don't believe in such things, but this is not necessarily the case. Florida psychiatrist Brian L. Weiss, a graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and currently chairman of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, says that since the publication of his best-selling book Many Lives, Many Masters in 1988—in which he discusses how he turned from being a skeptic to a believer in reincarnation after one of his patients started talking spontaneously about her past lives while under hypnosis—he has been deluged with letters and telephone calls from psychiatrists who say that they, too, are secret believers. "I think that is just the tip of the iceberg, " says Weiss. "There are psychiatrists who write me they've been doing regression therapy for ten to twenty years, in the privacy of their office, and 'please don't tell anyone... Many are receptive to it, but they won't admit it." Similarly, in a recent conversation with Whitton when I asked him if he felt reincarnation would ever become an accepted scientific fact, he replied, "I think it already is. My experience with scientists is that if they've read the literature, they believe in reincarnation. The evidence is just so compelling that intellectual assent is virtually natural." Weiss's and Whitton's opinions seem borne out by a recent survey on psychic phenomena. After being assured that their replies would remain anonymous, 58 percent of the 228 psychiatrists who responded (many of them the heads of departments and the deans of medical schools) said that they believed "an understanding of psychic phenomena" was important to future graduates of psychiatry! Forty-four percent admitted believing that psychic factors were important in the healing process. So it appears that fear of ridicule may be as much if not more of a stumbling block as disbelief in getting the scientific establishment to begin to treat psychic research with the seriousness it deserves. We need more trailblazers like Weiss and Whitton (and the myriad other courageous researchers whose work has been discussed in this book) to go public with their private beliefs and discoveries. In brief, we need the parapsychological equivalent of a Rosa Parks. Another feature that must be a part of the restructuring of science is a broadening of the definition of what constitutes scientific evidence. Psychic and spiritual phenomena have played a significant role in human history and have helped shape some of the most fundamental aspects of our culture. But because they are not easy to rope in and scrutinize in a laboratory setting, science has tended to ignore them. Even worse, when they are studied, it is often the least important aspects of the phenomena that are isolated and catalogued. For instance, one of the few discoveries regarding OBEs that is considered valid in a scientific sense is that the brain waves change when an OBEer exits the body. And yet, when one reads accounts like Monroe's, one realizes that if his experiences are real, they involve discoveries that could arguably have as much impact on human history as Columbus's discovery of the New World or the invention of the atomic bomb. Indeed, those who have watched a truly talented clairvoyant at work know immediately that they have witnessed something far more profound than is conveyed in the dry statistics of R. H. and Louisa Rhine. This is not to say that the Rhines' work is not important. But when vast numbers of people start reporting the same experiences, their anecdotal accounts should also be viewed as important evidence. They should not be dismissed merely because they cannot be documented as rigorously as other and often less significant features of the same phenomenon can be documented. As Stevenson states, "I believe it is better to learn what is probable about important matters than to be certain about trivial ones."
It is worth noting that this rule of thumb is already applied to other more accepted natural phenomena. The idea that the universe began in a single, primordial explosion, or Big Bang, is accepted without question by most scientists. And this is odd because, although there are compelling reasons to believe that this is true, no one has ever proved that it is true. On the other hand, if a near-death psychologist were to state flatly that the realm of light NDEers travel to during their experiences is an actual other level of reality, the psychologist would be attacked for making a statement that cannot be proved. And this is odd, for there are equally compelling reasons to believe this is true. In other words, science already accepts what is probable about very important matters if those matters fall into the category of "fashionable things to believe" but not if they fall into the category of "unfashionable things to believe." This double standard must be eliminated before science can begin to make significant inroads into the study of both psychic and spiritual phenomena. Most crucial of all, science must replace its enamorment with objectivity— the idea that the best way to study nature is to be detached, analytical, and dispassionately objective—with a more participatory approach. The importance of this shift has been stressed by numerous researchers, including Harman. We have also seen evidence of its necessity repeatedly throughout this book. In a universe in which the consciousness of a physicist affects the reality of a subatomic particle, the attitude of a doctor affects whether or not a placebo works, the mind of an experimenter affects the way a machine operates, and the imaginal can spill over into physical reality, we can no longer pretend that we are separate from that which we are studying. In a holographic and omnijective universe, a universe in which all things are part of a seamless continuum, strict objectivity ceases to be possible. This is especially true when studying psychic and spiritual phenomena and appears to be why some laboratories are able to achieve spectacular results when performing remote-viewing experiments, and some fail miserably. Indeed, some researchers in the paranormal field have already shifted from a strictly objective approach to a more participatory approach. For example, Valerie Hunt discovered that her experimental results were affected by the presence of individuals who had been drinking alcohol and thus won't allow any such individuals in her lab while she is taking measurements. In this same vein, Russian parapsychologists Dubrov and Pushkin have found that they have more success duplicating the findings of other parapsychologists if they hypnotize all of the test subjects present. It appears that hypnosis eliminates the interference caused by the conscious thoughts and beliefs of the test subjects, and helps produce "cleaner" results. Although such practices may seem odd in the extreme to us today, they may become standard operating procedures as science unravels further secrets of the holographic universe. A shift from objectivity to participation will also most assuredly affect the role of the scientist. As it becomes increasingly apparent that it is the experience of observing that is important, and not just the act of observation, it is logical to assume that scientists in turn will see themselves less and less as observers and more and more as experiencers. As Harman states, "A willingness to be transformed is an essential characteristic of the participatory scientist." Again, there is evidence that a few such transformations are already taking place. For instance, instead of just observing what happened to the Conibo after they consumed the soul-vine ayahuasca, Harner imbibed the hallucinogen himself. It is obvious that not all anthropologists would be willing to take such a risk, but it is also clear that by becoming a participant instead of just an observer, he was able to learn much more than he ever could have by just sitting on the sidelines and taking notes. Harner's success suggests that instead of just interviewing NDEers, OBEers, and other journeyers into the subtler realms, participatory scientists of the future may devise methods of traveling there themselves. Already lucid-dream researchers are exploring and reporting back on their own lucid-dream experiences. Others may develop different and even more novel techniques for exploring the inner dimensions. For instance, although not a scientist in the strictest definition of the term, Monroe has developed recordings of special rhythmic sounds that he feels facilitate out-of-body experiences. He has also founded a research center called the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in the Blue Ridge Mountains and claims to have trained hundreds of individuals to make the same out-of-body journeys he has made. Are such developments harbingers of the future, foreshadowings of a time when not only astronauts but "psychonauts" become the heroes we watch on the evening news?

An Evolutionary Thrust toward Higher Consciousness

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Science may not be the only force that offers us passage to the land of nonwhere. In his book "Heading toward Omega" Ring points out that there is compelling evidence that NDEs are on the increase. As we have seen, in tribal cultures individuals who have NDEs are often so transformed that they become shamans. Modern NDEers become spiritually transformed as well, mutating from their pre-NDE personalities into more loving, compassionate, and even more psychic individuals. From this Ring concludes that perhaps what we are witnessing is "the shamanizing of modern humanity." But if this is so, why are NDEs increasing? Ring believes that the answer is as simple as it is profound; what we are witnessing is "an evolutionary thrust toward higher consciousness for all humanity. " And NDEs may not be the only transformative phenomenon bubbling up from the collective human psyche. Grosso believes that the increase in Marian visions during the last century has evolutionary implications as well. Similarly, numerous researchers, including Raschke and Vallee, feel that the explosion of UFO sightings in the last several decades has evolutionary significance. Several investigators, including Ring, have pointed out that UFO encounters actually resemble shamanic initiations and may be further evidence of the shamanizing of modern humanity. Strieber agrees. "I think it's rather obvious that, whether [the UFO phenomenon is being] done by somebody or [is happening] naturally, what we're dealing with is an exponential leap from one species to another. I would suspect that what we're looking at is the process of evolution in action." If such speculations are true, what is the purpose of this evolutionary transformation? There appears to be two answers. Numerous ancient traditions speak of a time when the hologram of physical reality was much more plastic than it is now, much more like the amorphous and fluid reality of the afterlife dimension. For example, the Australian aborigines say that there was a time when the entire world was dreamtime. Edgar Cayce echoed this sentiment and asserted that the earth was "at first merely in the nature of thoughtforms or visualization made by pushing themselves out of themselves in whatever manner desired.... Then came materiality as such into the earth, through Spirit pushing itself into matter." The aborigines assert that the day will come when the earth returns to the dreamtime. In the spirit of pure speculation, one might wonder if, as we learn to manipulate the hologram of reality more and more, we will see the fulfillment of this prophecy. As we become more adept at tinkering with what Jahn and Dunne call the interface between consciousness and its environment, is it possible for us to experience a reality that is once again malleable? If this is true, we will need to learn much more than we presently know to manipulate such a plastic environment safely, and perhaps that is one purpose of the evolutionary processes that seem to be unfolding in our midst. Many ancient traditions also assert that humanity did not originate on the earth, and that our true home is... in a nonphysical and more paradisiacal realm of pure spirit. For instance, there is a Hindu myth that human consciousness began as a ripple that decided to leave the ocean of "consciousness as such, timeless, spaceless, infinite and eternal," Awakening to itself, it forgot that it was a part of this infinite ocean, and felt isolated and separated. Loye has argued that Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden may also be a version of this myth, an ancient memory of how human consciousness, somewhere in its unfathomable past, left its home in the implicate and forgot that it was a part of the cosmic wholeness of all things. In this view the earth is a kind of playground "in which one is free to experience all the pleasures of the flesh provided one realizes that one is a holographic projection of a . . . higher-order spatial dimension." If this is true, the evolutionary fires that are beginning to flicker and dance through our collective psyche may be our wake-up call, the trumpet note informing us that our true home is elsewhere and we can return there if we wish. Strieber, for one, believes this is precisely why UFOs are here: "I think that they are probably midwifing our birth into the nonphysical world—which is their origin. My impression is that the physical world is only a small instant in a much larger context and that reality is primarily unfolding in a non-physical way. I don't think that physical reality is the original source of being.
I think that being, as consciousness, probably predates the physical." Writer Terence McKenna, another longtime supporter of the holographic model, agrees:
"What this seems to be about is that from the time of the awareness of the existence of the soul until the resolution of the apocalyptic potential, there are roughly fifty thousand years.
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We are now, there can be no doubt, in the final historical seconds of that crisis—a crisis which involves the end of history, our departure from the planet, [and] the triumph over death. We are, in fact, closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter—the freeing of life from the dark chrysalis of matter."' Of course these are only speculations. But whether we are on the very brink of a transition, as Strieber and McKenna suggest, or whether that watershed is still some ways off in the future, it is apparent that we are following some track of spiritual evolution. Given the holographic nature of the universe, it is also apparent that at least something like the above two possibilities awaits us somewhere and somewhen. And lest we be tempted to assume that freedom from the physical is the end of human evolution, there is evidence that the more plastic and imaginal realm of the hereafter is also a mere stepping stone. For example, Swedenborg said that beyond the heaven he visited was another heaven, one so brilliant and formless to his perceptions that it appeared only as "a streaming of light". NDEers have also occasionally described these even more unfathomably tenuous realms. "There are many higher planes, and to get back to God (rather to the Source of All Suns, LM), to reach the plane where ... spirit resides, you have to drop your garment each time until your spirit is truly free, " states one of Whitton's subjects.
"The learning process never stops.... Sometimes we are allowed glimpses of the higher planes—each one is lighter and brighter than the one before." It may be frightening to some that reality seems to become increasingly frequency-like as one penetrates deeper into the implicate. And this is understandable. It is obvious that we are still like children who need the security of a coloring book, not yet ready to draw free-form and without lines to guide our clumsy hands. To be plunged into Swedenborg's realm of streaming light would be tantamount to plunging us into a completely fluid LSD hallucination. And we are not yet mature enough or in enough control of our emotions, attitudes, and beliefs to deal with the monsters our psyches would create for ourselves there. But perhaps that is why we are learning how to deal with small doses of the omnijective here, in the form of the relatively limited confrontations with the imaginal that UFOs and other similar experiences provide. And perhaps that is why the beings of light tell us again and again that the purpose of life is to learn. We are indeed on a shaman's journey, mere children struggling to become technicians of the sacred. We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one lesson stands out above all others. As long as the formlessness and breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue to dream a hologram for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well defined. But we must always heed Bohm's warning that the conceptual pigeonholes we use to parse out the universe are of our own making. They do not exist "out there, " for "out there" is only the indivisible totality. Brahman. And when we outgrow any given set of conceptual pigeonholes we must always be prepared to move on, to advance from soul-state to soul-state, as Sri Aurobindo put it, and from illumination to illumination. For our purpose appears to be as simple as it is endless. We are, as the aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity."

Some deep thoughts from "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot

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."

Enfolded (wrapped up, implicate) Orders and Unfolded Realities

One of Bohm's most startling assertions is that the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. Bohm calls this deeper level of reality the implicate (which means "enfolded") order, and he refers to our own level of existence as the explicate, or unfolded, order. He uses these terms because he sees the manifestation of all forms in the universe as the result of countless enfoldings and unfoldings between these two orders. For example, Bohm believes an electron is not one thing, but a totality or ensemble enfolded throughout the whole of space. Objective reality is impatial, unbiased, detached; that others have also found reason to view the universe as holographic, or at least to intuit its holographic qualities. For example, Bohm's idea that the universe can be viewed as the compound of two basic orders, the implicate and the explicate, can be found in many other traditions. The Tibetan Buddhists call these two aspects the void and nonvoid. The nonvoid is the reality of visible objects. The void, like the implicate order, is the birthplace of all things in the universe, which pour out of it in a "boundless flux. " However, only the void is real and all forms in the objective world are illusory, existing merely because of the unceasing flux between the two orders. Bohm's assertion that thoughts are like vortices in a river. "That all diseases might have their origin in the mind doesn't disturb Siegel. He sees it rather as a sign of a tremendous hope, an indicator that if one has the power to create sickness, one also has the power to create wellness...it is just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to the control the holographic mind has over the physical body. And the practical applications of such control are not limited strictly to matters of health. Numerous studies conducted around the world have shown that imagery also has an enormous on physical and athletic performance."
"...the Soviets have incorporated sophisticated imagery techniques into many of their athletic programs and that they believe mental images act as precursors in the process of generating neuromuscular impulses. Garfield believes imagery works because movement is recorded holographically in the brain. In his book Peak Performance: Mental Training Techniques of the World's Greatest Athletes, he states, "These images are holographic and function primarily at the subliminal level. The holographic imaging mechanism enables you to quickly solve spatial problems such as assembling a complex machine, choreographing a dance routine, or running visual images of plays through your mind."
"Physician Larry Dossey believes, that imagery is not the only tool the holographic mind can use to effect changes in the body. Another is simply the recognition of the unbroken wholeness of all things." As Pribram states: "If indeed every part of our body is a reflection of the whole, then there must be all kinds of mechanisms to control what's going on...It is clear from this that even information received subliminally can contribute greatly to the beliefs and mental images that impact on our health... but because we are unaware that we possess the power, we must be fooled into using it. This might almost be comic if it were not for the tragedies that often result from our ignorance of our own power. No incident better illustrates this than a now famous case reported by psychologist Bruno Klopfer. Klopfer was treating a man named Wright who had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted, and Wright appeared to have little time left. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drained out of his chest every day. But Wright did not want to die. He had heard about an exciting new drug called Krebiozen, and he begged his doctor to let him try it. At first his doctor refused because the drug was only being tried on people with a life expectancy of at least three months. But Wright was so unrelenting in his entreaties, his doctor finally gave in. He gave Wright an injection of Krebiozen on Friday, but in his heart of hearts he did not expect Wright to last the weekend. Then the doctor went home. To his surprise, on the following Monday he found Wright out of bed and walking around. Klopfer reported that his tumors had "melted like snowballs on a hot stove" and were half their original size. This was a far more rapid decrease in size than even the strongest X-ray treatments could have accomplished. Ten days after Wright's first Krebiozen treatment, he left the hospital and was, as far as his doctors could tell, cancer free. When he had entered the hospital he had needed an oxygen mask to breathe, but when he left he was well enough to fly his own plane at 12, 000 feet with no discomfort. Wright remained well for about two months, but then articles began to appear asserting that Krebiozen actually had no effect on cancer of the lymph nodes. Wright, who was rigidly logical and scientific in his thinking, became very depressed, suffered a relapse, and was readmitted to the hospital. This time his physician decided to try an experiment. He told Wright that Krebiozen was every bit as effective as it had seemed, but that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping. He explained, however, that he had a new highly concentrated version of the drug and could treat Wright with this. Of course the physician did not have a new version of the drug and intended to inject Wright with plain water. To create the proper atmosphere he even went through an elaborate procedure before injecting Wright with the placebo. Again the results were dramatic. Tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and Wright was quickly back on his feet and feeling great. He remained symptom-free for another two months, but then the American Medical Association announced that a nationwide study of Krebiozen had found the drug worthless in the treatment of cancer. This time Wright's faith was completely shattered. His cancer blossomed anew and he died two days later. Wright's story is tragic, but it contains a powerful message: When we are fortunate enough to bypass our disbelief and tap the healing forces within us, we can cause tumors to melt away overnight. In the case of Krebiozen only one person was involved, but there are similar cases involving many more people...

The Health Implications of Multiple Personality

...Another condition that graphically illustrates the mind's power to affect the body is MPD. In addition to possessing different brain-wave patterns, the subpersonalities of a multiple (short for a patient with MPD) have a strong psychological separation from one another. Each has his own name, age, memories, and abilities. Often each also has his own style of handwriting, announced gender, cultural and racial background, artistic talents, foreign language fluency and IQ. Even more noteworthy are the biological changes that take place in a multiple's body when they switch personalities. Frequently a medical condition possessed by one personality will mysteriously vanish when another personality takes over. Dr. Bennett Braun of the International Society for the study of Multiple Personality, in Chicago, has documented the case in which all of a patient's subpersonalities (alters) were allergic to orange juice, except one. If the man drank orange juice when one of his allergic personalities was in control, he would break out in a terrible rash. But if he switched to his nonallergic personality, the rash would instantly start to fade and he could drink orange juice freely. Dr. Francine Rowland, a Yale psychiatrist who specializes in treating multiples, relates an even more striking incident concerning one multiple's reaction to a wasp sting. On the occasion in question, the man showed up for his scheduled appointment with Rowland with his eye completely swollen shut from a wasp sting. Realizing he needed medical attention, Rowland called an ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, the soonest the opthalmologist could see the man was an hour later, and because the man was in severe pain, Rowland decided to try something. As it turned out, one of the man's alternates was an "anesthetic personality" who felt absolutely no pain. Rowland had the anesthetic personality take control of the body, and the pain ended. But something else also happened. By the time the man arrived at his appointment with the ophthalmologist, the swelling was gone and his eye had returned to normal. Seeing no need to treat him, the ophthalmologist sent him home. After a while, however, the anesthetic personality relinquished control of the body, and the man's original personality returned, along with all the pain and swelling of the wasp sting. The next day he went back to the ophthalmologist to at last be treated. Neither Rowland nor her patient had told the ophthalmologist that the man was a multiple, and after treating him, the ophthalmologist telephoned Rowland. "He thought time was playing tricks on him. " Rowland laughed. "He just wanted to make sure that I had actually called him the day before and he had not imagined it."
Allergies are not the only thing multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the control of the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it's banished by the pharmacological wizardry of the multiple. By changing personalities, a multiple who is drunk can instantly become sober. Different personalities also respond differently to different drugs. Braun records a case in which 5ml of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality , while 100ml had little or no effect on another (Arizona Wilder was saying, that she tried, but couldn't die from the sleeping pills' overdose, she couldn't get drunk, when she tried, LM). Often one or several of a multiple's personalities are children, and if an adult personality is given a drug and then a child's personality takes over, the adult dosage may be too much for the child and result in an overdose. It's also difficult to anesthetize some multiples waking up on the operating table after one of their "unanesthetizable" subpersonalities has taken over (R. Monroe also couldn't be anesthetize, LM).
Other conditions that can vary from personality to personality include scars, burn marks, cysts, left- and right-handedness. Visual acuity can differ, and some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of eyeglasses to accommodate their alternating personalities. One personality can be color-blind and another not, and even eye color can change. There are cases of women who have 2 or 3 menstrual periods each month because each of their subpersonalities has it's own cycle. More info from "The Holographic Universe": " Speech pathologist Christy Ludlow has found that the voice pattern for each of a multiple's personalities is different (not just the voice, but the frequency coming from the Alter, LM), a feat that requires such a deep psychological change that even the most accomplished actor cannot alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern. One multiple , admitted to a hospital for diabetes, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms when one of her non diabetic personalities was in control. There accounts of epilepsy coming and going with changes in personality, and psychologist Robert A. Phillips, Jr., reports that even tumors can appear and disappear (although he does not specify what kind of tumors). Multiples also tend to heal faster than normal individuals (Andy Pero from "Project Superman, Andy Pero's Story" comes to mind, LM). For example, there are several cases on record of third-degree burns healing with extraordinary rapidity. Most eerie of all, at least one researcher— Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the therapist whose pioneering treatment of Sybil Dorsett was portrayed in the book Sybil—is convinced that multiples don't age as fast as other people. How could such things be? At a recent symposium on the multiple personality syndrome, a multiple named Cassandra provided a possible answer, Cassandra attributes her own rapid healing ability both to the visualization techniques she practices and to something she calls parallel processing. As she explained, even when her alternate personalities are not in control of her body, they are still aware (and they watch what you are doing and help or sabotage, LM). This enables her to "think" on a multitude of different channels at once, to do things like work on several different term papers simultaneously, and even "sleep" while other personalities prepare her dinner and clean her house. Hence, whereas normal people only do healing imagery exercises two or three times a day, Cassandra does them around the clock. She even has a subpersonality named Celese who possesses a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and whose sole function is to spend twenty-four hours a day meditating and imaging the body's well-being. According to Cassandra, it is this full-time attention to her health that gives her an edge over normal people. Other multiples have made similar claims. We are deeply attached to the inevitability of things. If we have bad vision, we believe we will have bad vision for life, and if we suffer from diabetes, we do not for a moment think our condition might vanish with a change in mood or thought. But the phenomenon of multiple personality challenges this belief and offers further evidence of just how much our psychological states can affect the body's biology. If the psyche of an individual with MPD is a kind of multiple image hologram, it appears that the body is one as well, and can switch from one biological state to another as rapidly as the flutter of a deck of cards. The systems of control that must be in place to account for such capacities is mind-boggling and makes our ability to will away a wart look pale. Allergic reaction to a wasp sting is a complex and multifaceted process and involves the organized activity of antibodies, the production of histamine, the dilation and rupture of blood vessels, the excessive release of immune substances, and so on. What unknown pathways of influence enable the mind of a multiple to freeze all these processes in their tracks? Or what allows them to suspend the effects of alcohol and other drugs in the blood, or turn diabetes on and off? At the moment we don't know and must console ourselves with one simple fact. Once a multiple has undergone therapy and in some way becomes whole again, he or she can still make these switches at will. This suggests that somewhere in our psyches we all have the ability to control these things. And still this is not all we can do.
So it appears that through the use of images, the brain can tell the body what to do, including telling it to make more images. Images making images. Two mirrors reflecting each other infinitely. Such is the nature of the mind/body relationship in a holographic universe... immune cells have neuropeptide receptors. Neuropeptides are molecules the brain uses to communicate, the brain's telegrams, if you will. There was a time when it was believed that neuropeptides could only be found in the brain. But the existence of receptors (telegram receivers) on the cells in our immune system implies that the immune system is not separate from but is an extension of the brain. Neuropeptides have also been found in various other parts of the body, leading Pert to admit that she can no longer tell where the brain leaves off and the body begins... it is because the body is a hologram and each of its portions contains an image of the whole... Why would the acupuncture points in the ear be aligned in the shape of a miniature human? Oleson believes it is because of the holographic nature of the mind and body. Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the body may also contain the image of the whole. "The ear holograph is, logically, connected to the brain holograph which itself is connected to the whole body," he states."The way we use the ear to affect the rest of the body is by working through the brain holograph... he has accumulated evidence of eighteen different microacupuncture holograms in the body, including ones in the hands, feet, arms, neck, tongue, and even the gums. Like Oleson, Dale feels these microsystems are "holographic reiterations of the gross anatomy, " and believes there are still other such systems waiting to be discovered. In a notion reminiscent of Bohm's assertion that every electron in some way contains the cosmos, Dale hypothesizes that every finger, and even every cell, may contain its own acupuncture microsystem. Richard Leviton, a contributing editor at East West magazine, who has written about the holographic implications of acupuncture microsystems, thinks that alternative medical techniques—such as reflexology, a type of massage therapy that involves accessing all points of the body through stimulation of the feet, and iridology, a diagnostic technique that involves examining the iris of the eye in order to determine the condition of the body—may also be indications of the body's holographic nature. We are all potential wonderworkers, dormant yogis, and it is clear from the evidence presented in the preceding pages that it would behoove us both as individuals and as a species to devote a good deal more effort into exploring an harnessing these talents. The second message is that elements that go into the making of these neural holograms are many and subtle. They include the images upon which we meditate, our hopes and fears, the attitudes of our doctors, our unconscious prejudices, our individual and cultural beliefs, and our faith in things both spiritual and technological. More than just facts, these are important clues, signposts that point toward those things that we must become aware of and acquire mastery over if we are to learn how to unleash and manipulate these talents. There are, no doubt, other factors involved, other influences that shape and circumscribe these abilities, for one thing should now be obvious. In a holographic universe, a universe in which a slight change in attitude can mean the difference between life and death, in which things are so subtly interconnected... Bohm believes viewing the universe as a holomovement does provide us with a context (framework). Jahn and Dunne believe that since all known physical processes possess a wave/particle duality, it is not unreasonable to assume that consciousness does as well. When it is particlelike, consciousness would appear to be localized in our heads, but in its wavelike aspect, consciousness, like all wave phenomena, could also produce remote influence effects. They believe one of these remote influence effects is PK. But Jahn and Dunne do not stop here. They believe that reality is itself the result of the interface (boundary) between the wavelike aspects of consciousness and the wave patterns of matter. In thinking that is again similar to Bohm's, Jahn and Dunne propose that PK actually involves an exchange of information between consciousness and physical reality, an exchange that should be thought of less as a flow between the mental and the material, and more as a resonance between the two. The importance of resonance was even sensed and commented on by the volunteers in the PK experiments, in that the most frequently mentioned factor associated with a successful performance was the attainment of a feeling of "resonance" with the machine.
"To the extent that we're talking about a rather basic reliance on wave mechanical behavior, there is some commonality between what we're postulating and the holographic idea, " says Jahn. "It gives to consciousness the capacity to function in a wave mechanical sense and thereby to avail itself (take advantage of it), one way or another, of all of space and time." Dunne agrees: "In some sense the holographic model could be perceived as addressing the mechanism whereby the consciousness interacts with that wave mechanical, aboriginal, sensible muchness, and somehow manages to convert it into usable information. In another sense,
if you imagine that the individual consciousness has its own characteristic wave patterns, you could view it—metaphorically, of course—as the laser of a particular frequency that intersects with a specific pattern in the cosmic hologram."
So far, PK effects produced in the lab have been limited to relatively small objects, but the evidence suggests that some individuals at least can use PK to bring about even greater changes in the physical world. Some researchers believe this suggests that the consciousness may be able to do much more than make a few psychokinetic changes in the material world... Thus, not only could the conventionally recognized rules of nature, such as inertia, be completely bypassed, but the mind could alter and reshape the material world in ways far more dramatic than even psychokinesis implies... Grof's proposal that altered states of consciousness may be required in order to make such changes in the implicate is also attested to by the frequency with which fire immunity is associated with heightened faith and religious zeal. The pattern that began to take shape in the last chapter continues, and its message becomes increasingly clear—the deeper and more emotionally charged our beliefs, the greater the changes we can make in both our bodies and reality itself. Bohm admits to believing that the universe is all "thought" and reality exists only in what we think ... Unlike Bohm, Jahn and Dunne believe subatomic particles do not possess a distinct reality until consciousness enters the picture... In stark contrast to Pribram, he believes that the seemingly inexhaustible array of "separate realities" Castaneda experienced under Don Juan's tutelage—and indeed even the equally vast array of realities we experience during ordinary dreaming—indicate that there are an infinite number of potential realities enfolded in the implicate. Moreover, because the holographic mechanisms the brain uses to construct everyday reality are the same ones it uses to construct our dreams and the realities we experience during Castaneda-esque (esque - possession of a specified quality) altered states of consciousness, he believes all three types of reality are fundamentally the same. N. David Mermin, a physicist at Cornell University, points out, physicists fall into three categories: a small minority is troubled by the philosophical implications; a second group has elaborate reasons why they are not troubled, but their explanations tend "to miss the point entirely"; and a third group has no elaborate explanations but also refuses to say why they aren't troubled. "Their position is unassailable (not able to be challenged)," says Mermin.
Jahn and Dunne are not so timid. They believe that instead of discovering particles, physicists may actually be creating them. As evidence, they cite a recently discovered subatomic particle called an anomalon, whose properties vary from laboratory to laboratory. Imagine owning a car that had a different color and different features depending on who drove it ! One explanation is that he was obtaining it telepathically from someone else's mind, in this case, the hypnotist's. The ability of hypnotized individuals to "tap" into the senses of other people has been reported by other investigators... After hypnotizing the girl he told her that she would taste everything he tasted. "Standing behind the girl, whose eyes I had securely bandaged, I took up some salt and put it in my mouth; instantly she sputtered and exclaimed, 'What for are you putting salt in my mouth?' Then I tried sugar; she said That's better'; asked what it was like, she said 'Sweet. ' Then mustard, pepper, ginger, et cetera were tried; each was named and apparently tasted by the girl when I put them in my own mouth... So it appears that we are deeply interconnected with each other in yet another way, a situation that is not so strange in a holographic universe. Moreover, these interconnections manifest even when we are not consciously aware of them... Given both our deep interconnectedness and our ability to construct entirely convincing realities out of information received via this interconnectedness, such as Tom did, what would happen if two or more hypnotized individuals tried to construct the same imaginary reality? If consciousness plays a role in the creation of subatomic particles, is it possible that our observations of the subatomic world are also reality-fields of a kind? If Jahn can perceive a suit of armor through the senses of a friend in Paris, is it any more farfetched to believe that physicists all around the world are unconsciously interconnecting with one another and using a form of mutual hypnosis similar to that used by Tart's subjects to create the consensus characteristics they observe in an electron? Physiologically speaking, the mental state hypnosis most closely resembles is our normal waking consciousness. Does this mean that normal waking consciousness is itself a kind of hypnosis, and we are all constantly tapping into reality-fields?
As bizarre as this sounds, it is not so strange when one remembers that in a holographic universe, consciousness pervades (saturate) all matter, and "meaning" has an active presence in both the mental and physical worlds. Bohm believes the ubiquitousness (ever-present, omnipresent, universal) of meaning offers a possible explanation for both telepathy and remote viewing. He thinks both may actually be just different forms of psychokinesis. Just as PK is a resonance of meaning conveyed from a mind to an object, telepathy can be viewed as a resonance of meaning conveyed from a mind to a mind, says Bohm. In like manner, remote viewing can be looked at as a resonance of meaning conveyed from an object to a mind... This leaves one with the unsettling conclusion that Kamro's new blood must have materialized out of thin air. The ability to create an infinitesimal particle or two pales in comparison to the materialization of the ten to twelve pints of blood necessary to replenish the average human body. And blood is not the only thing we can create out of thin air... Since our poltergeist left my family's home and followed me when I went away to college, and since its activity very definitely seemed connected to my moods - its antics becoming more malicious when I was angry or my spirits were low, and more impish and whimsical (playful, fantastic) when my mood was brighter—I have always accepted the idea that poltergeists are manifestations of the unconscious psychokinetic ability of the person around whom they are most active. This connection to my emotions displayed itself frequently. If I was in a good mood, I might wake up to find all of my socks draped over the house plants. If I was in a darker frame of mind, the poltergeist might manifest by hurling a small object across the room or occasionally even by breaking something. Over the years both I and various family members and friends witnessed a wide range of psychokinetic activity. My mother tells me that even when I was a toddler pots and pans had already begun to jump inexplicably from the middle of the kitchen table to the floor. I have written about some of these experiences in my book "Beyond the Quantum"... because we ourselves are so deeply programmed to see the world in terms of parts. This implies that if we were not so inculcated (to teach by constant repetition) in thinking in terms of parts, if we viewed the world differently, miracles would also be different. Rather than finding so many examples of miracles in which the parts of reality had been transformed, we would find more instances in which the whole of reality had been transformed... Watson provides one. While he was in Indonesia he also encountered another young woman with power. The woman's name was Tia, but unlike Alin's power, hers did not seem to be an expression of an unconscious psychic gift. Instead it was consciously controlled and stemmed from Tia's natural connection to forces that lie dormant in most of us. Tia was, in short, a shaman in the making. Watson witnessed many examples of her gifts. He saw her perform miraculous healings, and once, when she was engaged in a power struggle with the local Moslem religious leader, he saw her use the power of her mind to set the minaret of the local mosque on fire. But he witnessed one of Tia's most awesome displays when he accidentally stumbled upon her talking with a little girl in a shady grove of kenari trees. Even at a distance, Watson could tell from Tia's gestures that she was trying to communicate something important to the child. Although he could not hear their conversation, he could tell from her air of frustration that she was not succeeding. Finally, she appeared to get an idea and started an eerie dance. Entranced, Watson continued to watch as she gestured toward the trees, and although she scarcely seemed to move, there was something hypnotic about her subtle gesticulations. Then she did something that both shocked and dismayed Watson. She caused the entire grove of trees suddenly to blink out of existence. As Watson states, "One moment Tia danced in a grove of shady kenari; the next she was standing alone in the hard, bright light of the sun." A few seconds later she caused the grove to reappear, and from the way the little girl leapt to her feet and rushed around touching the trees, Watson was certain that she had shared the experience also. But Tia was not finished. She caused the grove to blink on and off several times as both she and the little girl linked hands, dancing and giggling at the wonder of it all. Watson simply walked away, his head reeling... I was born with a great deal of native psychic ability. As an adolescent I started having vivid and detailed dreams about events that would later happen. I often knew things about people I had no right knowing. When I was seventeen I spontaneously developed the ability to see an energy field, or "aura, " around living things, and to this day can often determine things about a person's health by their pattern and colors of the mist of light that I see surrounding them. Above and beyond that, all I can say is that we are all gifted with different aptitudes and qualities. Some of us are natural artists. Some dancers. I seem to have been born with the chemistry necessary to trigger shifts in reality, to catalyze somehow the forces required to precipitate paranormal events. I am grateful for this capacity because it has taught me a great deal about the universe, but I do not know why I have it... Is it a hologram that only seems stable, but under special circumstances can be changed and reshaped in virtually limitless ways, as the evidence of the miraculous suggests? Some researchers who have embraced the holographic idea believe the latter is the case. For example, Grof not only takes materialization and other extreme paranormal phenomena seriously, but feels that reality is indeed cloud-built and pliant to the subtle authority of consciousness. "The world is not necessarily as solid as we perceive it, " he says... Tiller thinks the universe is also a kind of holodeck created by the "integration" of all living things. "We've created it as a vehicle of experience, and we've created the laws that govern it, " he asserts. "And when we get to the frontiers of our understanding, we can in fact shift the laws so that we're also creating the physics as we go along."
Given Ullman's assertion that our psyche is constantly trying to teach us things we are unaware of in our waking state, our unconscious may even be programmed to produce occasionally such miracles in order to offer us glimpses of reality's true nature, to show us that the world we create for ourselves is ultimately as creatively infinite as the reality of our dreams. Saying that reality is created by the integration of all living things is really no different from saying that the universe is comprised of reality fields.
"We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus
we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime."
Another phenomenon often associated with saints is bilocation, or the ability to be in two places at once. According to Haraldsson, Sai Baba does biolocation one better. Numerous witnesses have reported watching him snap his fingers and vanish, instantly reappearing a hundred or more yards away. Such incidents very much suggest that our bodies are not objects, but holographic projections that can blink "off" in one location and "on" in another with the same ease that an image might vanish and reappear on a video screen. An incident that further underscores the holographic and immaterial nature of the body can be found in phenomena produced by an Icelandic medium named Indridi Indridason. In 1905 several of Iceland's leading scientists decided to investigate the paranormal and chose Indridason as one of their subjects. At the time, Indridason was just a country bumpkin with no previous experience with things psychic, but he quickly proved to be a spectacularly talented medium. He could go into trance quickly and produce dramatic displays of PK. But most bizarre of all, sometimes while he was deep in trance, different parts of his body would completely dematerialize. As the astonished scientists watched, an arm or a hand would fade out of existence, only to rematerialize before he awakened. Such events again offer us a tantalizing glimpse of the enormous potentialities that may lie dormant in all of us. As we have seen, our current scientific understanding of the universe is completely incapable of explaining the various phenomena we have examined in this chapter and therefore has no choice but to ignore them. However, if researchers such as Grof and Tiller are correct and the mind is able to intercede in the implicate order, the holographic plate that gives birth to the hologram we call the universe, and thus create any reality or laws of physics that it wants to, then not only are such things possible, but virtually anything is possible. If this is true, the apparent solidity of the world is only a small part of what is available to our perception. Although most of us are indeed entrapped in our current description of the universe, a few individuals do have the ability to see beyond the world's solidity... Many cultures believe the aura of an extremely spiritual individual is so bright it is visible even to normal human perception, which is why so many traditions, including Christian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Egyptian, depict saints as having halos or other circular symbols around their heads. The great Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan, who died in 1927, is said to have sometimes given off so much light that people could actually read by it. Under normal circumstances, however, the human energy field is visible only to individuals who have a specially developed capacity to see it. Sometimes people are born with the ability. Sometimes it develops spontaneously at a certain point in a person's life, as it did in my case, and sometimes it develops as the result of some practice or discipline, often of a spiritual nature. The first time I saw the distinctive mist of light around my arm I thought it was smoke and jerked my arm up to see if I had somehow caught my sleeve on fire. Of course, I hadn't and quickly discovered that the light surrounded my entire body and formed a nimbus (luminous mist, cloud) around everyone else's as well. According to some schools of thought the human energy field has a number of distinct layers. I do not see layers in the field and have no personal basis to judge if this is true or not. These layers are actually said to be three-dimensional energy bodies that occupy the same space as the physical body but are of increasingly larger size so that they only look like layers, or strata, as they extend outward from the body. Many psychics assert that there are seven main layers, or subtle bodies, each progressively less dense than the one before it, and each increasingly more difficult to see. Different schools of thought refer to these energy bodies by different names. One common system of nomenclature refers to the first four as the etheric body; the astral, or emotional body; the mental body, and the causal, or intuitive body. It is generally believed that the etheric body, the body that is closest in size to the physical body, is a kind of energy blueprint and is involved in guiding and shaping the growth of the physical body. As their names suggest, the next three bodies are related to emotional, mental, and intuitive processes. Virtually noone agrees on, what to call the remaining three bodies, although it is commonly agreed, that they have to do with the soul and higher spiritual functioning. According to Indian yogic literature, and to many psychics as well, we also have special energy centers in our body. These focal points of subtle energy are connected to endocrine glands and major nerve centers in the physical body, but also extend up and into the energy field.
Because they resemble spinning vortices of energy, when they are looked at head-on, yogic literature refers to them as chakras, from the Sanskrit word for "wheel, " and this term is still used today. The crown chakra, an important chakra, that originates in the uppermost tip of the brain and is associated with spiritual awakening, is often described by clairvoyants as looking like a little cyclone whirling in the energy field on top of the head, and it is the only chakra I see clearly. (My own abilities appear to be too rudimentary to permit me to see the other chakras). It ranges from a few inches to a foot or more in height. When people are in a joyous state, this whirlwind of energy grows taller and brighter, and when they dance, it bobs and sways like a candle flame... The human energy field is not always bluish white, but can possess various colors. According to talented psychics, these colors, their muddiness or intensity, and their location in the aura are related to a person's mental state, emotional state, activity, health, and assorted other factors.
"If I'm seeing the etheric, it's usually because it contains leaks or rips that are keeping the aura from being whole. Thus I cannot see it completely. There are only patches of it. It's kind of like a ripped blanket or a torn curtain. Holes in the etheric field are usually the result of trauma, injury, illness, or some other kind of devastating experience. "But beyond seeing the etheric, Dryer says that instead of seeing the layers of the aura like tiers of cake piled one on top of the other,
she experiences them as changing textures and intensities of visual sensation. She compares this to being immersed in the ocean and feeling water of different temperatures wash by." Rather than getting into rigid concepts like layers, I tend to see the energy field in terms of movements and waves of energy, "she says."
It's as if my vision is telescoping through various levels and dimensions of the energy field, but I don't actually see it neatly arranged in various layers."
This does not mean that Dryer's perception of the human energy field is in any way less detailed than Brennan's. She perceives a dazzling amount of pattern and structure—kaleidoscopic clouds of color shot through with light, complex images, glistening shapes, and gossamer mists. However, not all energy fields are created equal. According to Dryer, shallow people have shallow and humdrum (dull) auras. Conversely, the more complex the person, the more complex and interesting their energy field. "A person's energy field is as individual as their fingerprint I've never really seen any two that look alike, " she says. Like Brennan, Dryer can diagnose illnesses by looking at a person's aura, and when she chooses she can adjust her vision and see the chakras. But Dryer's special skill is the ability to peer deep into a person's psyche and give them an eerily accurate status report of the weaknesses, strengths, needs, and general health of their emotional, psychological, and spiritual being. So profound are her talents in this area that some have likened a session with Dryer to six months of psychotherapy. Numerous clients have credited her with completely transforming their lives, and her files are filled with glowing letters of thanks. I, too, can attest to Dryer's abilities. In my first reading with her, and although we were virtual strangers, she proceeded to describe things about me that not even my closest friends know. These were not just vague platitudes, but specific and detailed assessments of my talents, vulnerabilities, and personality dynamics. By the end of the two-hour session I was convinced that Dryer had not been looking at my physical presence, but at the energy construct of my psyche itself. I have also had the privilege of talking with and/or listening to the session recordings of over two dozen of Dryer's clients, and have discovered that, almost without exception, others have found her as accurate and insightful as did I. Instead of seeing the aura, Joy initially was only able to feel its presence with his hands. "I was examining a healthy male in his early twenties, " he says. "As my hand passed over the solar plexus area, the pit of the stomach, I sensed something that felt like a warm cloud. It seemed to radiate out three to four feet from the body, perpendicular to the surface and to be shaped like a cylinder about four inches in diameter." Joy went on to discover that all his patients had palpable cylinderlike radiations emanating not only from their stomachs, but from various other points on their bodies. It wasn't until he read an ancient Hindu book about the human energy system that he found he had discovered, or rather rediscovered, the chakras. Like Brennan, Joy thinks the holographic model offers the best explanation for understanding the human energy field. He also feels that the ability to see auras is latent in all of us. I believe, that reaching expanded states of consciousness is merely the attuning of our central nervous system to perceptive states that have always existed in us but have been blocked by our outer mental conditioning..."
Once Hunt confirmed the existence of the human energy field, she, too, became convinced that the holographic idea offers one model for understanding it. In addition to its frequency aspects, she points out that the energy field, and indeed all of the body's electrical systems, is holographic in another way. Like the information in a hologram, these systems are distributed globally throughout the body. For instance, the electrical activity measured by an electroencephalograph is strongest in the brain, but an EEC reading can also be made by attaching an electrode to the toe. Similarly, an EKG can be picked up in the little finger. It's stronger and higher in amplitude in the heart, but its frequency and pattern are the same everywhere in the body. Hunt believes this is significant. Although every portion of what she calls the "holographic field reality" of the aura contains aspects of the whole energy field, different portions are not absolutely identical to each other. These differing amplitudes keep the energy field from being a static hologram, and instead allow it to be dynamic and flowing, says Hunt. One of Hunt's most startling findings is that certain talents and abilities seem to be related to the presence of specific frequencies in a person's energy field. She has found that when the main focus of a person's consciousness is on the material world, the frequencies of their energy field tend to be in the lower range and are not too far removed from the 250 cps of the body's biological frequencies. In addition to these, people who are psychic or who have healing abilities also have frequencies of roughly 400 to 800 cps in their field. People who can go into trance and apparently channel other information sources through them, skip these "psychic" frequencies entirely and operate in a narrow band between 800 and 900 cps. "They don't have any psychic breadth at all, " states Hunt. "They're up there in their own field. It's narrow. It's pinpointed, and they literally are almost out of it." People who have frequencies above 900 cps are what Hunt calls mystical personalities. Whereas psychics and trance mediums are often just conduits of information, mystics possess the wisdom to know what to do with the information, says Hunt. They are aware of the cosmic interrelatedness of all things and are in touch with every level of human experience. They are anchored in ordinary reality, but often have both psychic and trance abilities. However, their frequencies also extend way beyond the bands associated with these capabilities. Recall Bohm's assertion that there is no such thing as disorder, only orders of indefinitely high degree. Bohm also believes that at a subquantum level beyond the atom there are many subtle energies still unknown to science... But we still do not know what an electric or a gravitational field really is. "The pattern is never a repeatable one, but it's so dynamic and complex, I call it a chaos holograph pattern," Hunt obtained a chaos pattern from three to four seconds of data recorded by one electrode, suggesting that the human energy field is far richer in information and possesses a far more complex and dynamic organization than even the electrical activity of the brain. Rich says she often sees what looks like a little transparent movie going on around a client's head: "Sometimes I see a small image of the person behind their head or shoulders doing various things they do in life. My clients tell me that my descriptions are very accurate and specific. I can see their offices and what their bosses look like. I can see what they've thought of and what's happened to them during the last six months. Recently I told a client that I could see her home and she had masks and flutes hanging on her wall. She said, 'No, no, no. ' I said yes, there are musical instruments hanging on the wall, mostly flutes, and there are masks. And then she said, 'Oh, that's my summer home.' Dryer says she also sees what look like three-dimensional movies in a person's energy field. "Usually they're in color, but they can also be brown, or look like tintypes. Often they depict a story about the person that can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour to unfold. The images are also incredibly detailed. When I see a person sitting in a room I can tell them how many plants are in the room, how many leaves are on each plant, and how many bricks are in the wall... Dryer likens the images she sees to holograms and says that when she chooses one and starts to watch it, it seems to expand and fill the entire room. "If I see something going on with a person's shoulder, such as an injury, suddenly the whole scene widens. That's when I get the sense that it's a hologram because sometimes I feel I can step right into it and be a part of it. It's not happening to me, but around me. It's almost as if I'm in a three-dimensional movie, a holographic movie, with the person." Dryer's holographic vision is not limited to events from a person's life. She sees visual representations of the operations of the unconscious mind as well. As we all know, the unconscious mind speaks in a language of symbols and metaphors. This is why dreams often seem so nonsensical and mysterious. However, once one learns how to interpret the language of the unconscious, the meanings of dreams become clear. Indeed, it is clear from the work of psychics like Rich and Dryer that there is an enormous amount of information in the energy field. One wonders if this is perhaps why Hunt obtained such a pronounced chaos pattern when she analyzed data from the aura... As Brennan puts it, "The aura not only represents, but also contains, the whole. Instead of talking about the etheric body and things like that, I chose to use the holographic model as a way of explaining it and call it Holographic Body Assessment." In the last chapter we explored the possibility that the body is not a solid construct, but is itself a kind of holographic image. Another faculty possessed by many clairvoyants seems to support this notion, that is, the ability to literally look inside a person's body. Individuals who are gifted at seeing the energy field can also often adjust their vision and see through the flesh and bones of the body as if they were no more than layers of colored mist. During the course of her research, Karagulla discovered a number of people, both in and out of the medical profession, who possessed this X-ray vision... Karagulla wrote, "For me as a psychiatrist to be meeting somebody who was reported to be able to 'see' right through me was a shattering reversal of my usual procedures."
A few years back I started having trouble with my spleen. To try and remedy the situation, I began performing daily visualization exercises, seeing images of my spleen in a state of wholeness and health, seeing it being bathed in healing light, and so on. Unfortunately, I am a very impatient person, and when I did not have overnight success I got angry. During my next meditation I mentally scolded my spleen and warned it in no uncertain terms that it better start doing what I wanted. This incident took place purely in the privacy of my own thoughts, and I quickly forgot about it. A few days later I saw Dryer and asked her if she could look into my body and tell me if there was anything I should be aware of (I did not tell her about my health problem). Nonetheless, she immediately described what was wrong with my spleen and then paused, scowling as if she was confused. "Your spleen's very upset about something, " she murmured. And then suddenly it hit her. "Have you been yelling at your spleen?" I sheepishly admitted that I had. Dryer all but threw her hands up. "You mustn't do that. Your spleen became ill because it thought it was doing what you wanted. That was because you were unconsciously giving it the wrong directions. Now that you've yelled at it, it's really confused. " She shook her head with concern. "Never, never get angry at your body or your internal organs, " she advised. "Only send them positive messages. " The incident not only revealed Dryer's skill at looking inside the human body, but also seemed to suggest that my spleen has some sort of mentality or consciousness all of its own. It reminded me not only of Pert's assertion that she no longer knows where the brain leaves off and the body begins, but made me wonder if perhaps all of the body's subcomponents —glands, bones, organs, and cells—possess their own intelligence? ...Because an illness can appear in the energy field weeks and even months before it appears in the body, many psychics believe that disease actually originates in the energy field. This suggests that the field is in some way more primary than the physical body and functions as a kind of blueprint from which the body gets its structural cues... At present, medical science is at a loss to explain how mental imagery could actually create an illness. But, as we have seen, ideas that are prominent in our thoughts quickly appear as images in the energy field. If the energy field is the blueprint that guides and molds the body, it may be that by imaging an illness, even unconsciously, and repeatedly reinforcing its presence in the field, we are in effect programming the body to manifest the illness. Similarly, this same dynamic linkage between mental images, the energy field, and theother way around is Richard Gerber, a Detroit physician who has spent the last twelve years investigating the medical implications of the body's subtle energy fields.
"The etheric body is a holographic energy template, that guides the growth and development of the physical body," says Gerber. Gerber believes, that the distinct layers, some psychics see in the aura, also play a factor in the dynamic relationship among thought, the energy field, and the physical body. Just as the physical body is subordinate to the etheric, the etheric body is subordinate to the astral/emotional body, the astral/emotional to the mental, and so on, says Gerber, with each body functioning as the template for the one before it. Thus the subtler the layer of the energy field in which an image or thought manifests, the greater its ability to heal and reshape the body. "Because the mental body feeds energy into the astral/emotional body, which then funnels down into the etheric and physical bodies, healing a person at the mental level is stronger and produces longer lasting results than healing from either the astral or etheric levels, " says Gerber. Physicist Tiller agrees. "The thoughts that one creates generate patterns at the mind level of nature. So we see that illness, in fact, eventually becomes manifest from the altered mind patterns through the rachet effect—first, to effect at the etheric level and then, ultimately, at the physical level [where] we see it openly as disease. " Tiller believes the reason illnesses often recur is that medicine currently treats only the physical level. He feels that if doctors could treat the energy field as well, they would bring about longer lasting cures. Until then, many treatments "will not be permanent because we have not altered the basic hologram at the mind and spiritual levels,"... Tiller even suggests that the universe itself started as a subtle energy field and gradually became dense and material through a similar rachet effect... Like the image a psychic sees floating in the human energy field, this divine pattern functioned as a template, influencing and molding increasingly less subtle levels of the cosmic energy field "on down the line via a series of holograms, " until it eventually coalesced into a hologram of a physical universe. If this is true, it suggests that the human body is holographic in another way, for each of us truly would be a universe in miniature. Furthermore, if our thoughts can cause ghostly holographic images to form, not only in our own energy fields, but in the subtle energetic levels of reality itself... Again, it may be that our thoughts are constantly affecting the subtle energetic levels of the holographic universe, but only emotionally powerful thoughts, such as the ones that accompany moments of Crisis and transformation—the kind of events that seem to engender synchronises—are potent enough to manifest as a series of coincidences in physical reality. Of course, these processes are not contingent (accidental) on the subtle energy fields of the universe being stratified (arranged) into rigidly defined layers. They could also work even if the subtle fields of the universe are a smooth continuum. In fact, given how sensitive these subtle fields are to our thoughts, we must be very careful when trying to form set ideas about their organization and structure. What we believe about them may in fact help mold and create their structure. This is perhaps why psychics disagree about whether the human energy field is divided into layers. Psychics who believe in clearly defined layers may actually be causing the energy field to form itself into layers. The individual whose energy field is being observed may also participate in this process. Brennan is very frank about this and notes that the more one of her clients understands the difference between the layers, the clearer and more distinct the layers of their energy field become. She admits that the structure she sees in the energy field is thus but one system, and others have come up with other systems. For example, the authors of the tantras, a collection of Hindu yogic texts written during the fourth through sixth centuries A. D., perceived only three layers in the energy field. There is evidence that the structures clairvoyants inadvertently create in the energy field can be remarkably long-lived. For centuries the ancient Hindus believed that each chakra also had a Sanskrit letter written in its center. Japanese researcher Hiroshi Motoyama, a clinical psychologist who has successfully developed a technique for measuring the electrical presence of the chakras, says that he first became interested in the chakras because his mother, a simple woman with natural clairvoyant gifts, could see them clearly. However, for years she was puzzled because she could see what looked like an inverted sailboat in her heart chakra. It wasn't until Motoyama began his own investigations that he discovered what his mother was seeing was the Sanskrit letter yam, the letter the ancient Hindus perceived in the heart chakra. Some psychics, such as Dryer, say that they also see Sanskrit letters in the chakras. Others do not. The only explanation appears to be that psychics who see the letters are actually tuning into holographic structures long ago imposed on the energy field by the beliefs of the ancient Hindus... At first glance this notion may seem strange, but it does have a precedent (previous incident). As we have seen, one of the basic tenets of quantum physics is that we are not discovering reality, but participating in its creation. It may be that as we probe deeper into the levels of reality beyond the atom, the levels where the subtle energies of the human aura appear to lie, the participatory nature of reality becomes even more pronounced.Thus we must be extremely cautious about saying that we have discovered a particular structure or pattern in the human energy field, when we may have actually created what we have found. Somehow their brains were creating the comforting delusion that they had consciously controlled the action even though they had not. This has caused some researchers to, wonder if free will is an illusion. Later studies have shown that one and a half seconds before we "decide" to move one of our muscles, such as lift a finger, our brain has already started to generate the signals necessary to accomplish the movement. Again, who is making the decision, the conscious mind or the unconscious mind? Valarie Hunt does such findings one better. She has discovered that the human energy field responds to stimuli even before the brain does. She has taken EMG readings of the energy field and EEC readings of the brain simultaneously and discovered that when she makes a loud sound or flashes a bright light, the EMG of the energy field registers the stimulus before it ever shows up on the EEC. What does it mean? "I think we have way overrated the brain as the active ingredient in the relationship of a human to the world, " says Hunt. "It's just a real good computer. But the aspects of the mind that have to do with creativity, imagination, spirituality, and all those things, I don't see them in the brain at all. The mind's not in the brain. It's in that darn field... Dryer has also noticed that the energy field responds before a person consciously registers a response. As a consequence, instead of trying to judge her client's reactions by watching their facial expressions, she keeps her eyes closed and watches how their energy fields react. "As I speak I can see the colors change in their energy field. I can see how they feel about what I'm saying without having to ask them. For instance, if their field becomes foggy I know they're not understanding what I'm telling them, " she states. If the mind is not in the brain, but in the energy field that permeates both the brain and the physical body, this may explain why psychics such as Dryer see so much of the content of a person's psyche in the field. It may also explain how my spleen, an organ not normally associated with thought, managed to have its own rudimentary form of intelligence. Indeed, if the mind is in the field, it suggests that our awareness, the thinking, feeling part of ourselves, may not even be confined to the physical body, and as we will see, there is considerable evidence to support this idea as well. But first we must turn our attention to another issue. The solidity of the body is not the only thing, that is illusory in a holographic universe. As we have seen, Bohm believes that even time itself is not absolute, but unfolds out of the implicate order. This suggests that the linear division of time into past, present, and future is also just another construct of the mind...as the present enfolds and becomes part of the past, it does not cease to exist, but simply returns to the cosmic storehouse of the implicate. Or as Bohm puts it, "The past is active in the present as a kind of implicate order." If, as Bohm suggests, consciousness also has its source in the implicate, this means that the human mind and the holographic record of the past already exist in the same domain, are, in a manner of speaking, already neighbors. Thus, a shift in the focus of one's attention may be all that is needed to access the past. A person, who is unfamiliar with holograms might mistakenly assume that the various stages in the blowing of the soap bubble are transitory and once perceived can never be viewed again, but this is not true. The entire activity is always recorded in the hologram, and it is the viewer's changing perspective that provides the illusion that it is unfolding in time. The holographic theory suggests that the same is true of our own past. Instead of fading into oblivion, it too remains recorded in the cosmic hologram and can always be accessed once again. Another suggestively hologramlike feature of the retrocognitive experience is the three-dimensionality of the scenes that are accessed. For instance, psychic Rich, who can also psychometrize (say about their past) objects, says she knows what Ossowiecki meant when he said that the images he saw were as three-dimensional and real, even more real, than the room in which he was sitting. "It's as if the scene takes over, " says Rich. "It's dominant, and once it starts to unfold I actually become a part of it. It's like being in two places at once. I'm aware that I'm sitting in a room, but I'm also in the scene." Similarly holographic is the nonlocal nature of the ability. Psychics are able to access the past of a particular archaeological site both when they are at the site and when they are many miles removed. In other words, the record of the past does not appear to be stored at any one location, but like the information in a hologram, it is nonlocal and can be accessed from any point in the space-time framework. Put another way, the past may be just one more thing that is encoded in Pribram's frequency domain, a portion of the cosmic interference patterns that most of us edit out and only a few tune into and convert into hologramlike images. The notion that some events leave stronger imprints in the holographic record than others is also supported by the tendency of hauntings to occur at locations, where some terrible act of violence or other unusually powerful emotional occurence has taken place. The literature is filled with apparitions appearing at the sites of murders, military battles and other kinds of mayhem. This suggests that in addition to images and sounds, the emotions being felt during an event are also recorded in the cosmic hologram. Again it appears that it is the emotional intensity of such events that makes them more prominent in the holographic record, and that allows normal individuals to unwittingly tap into them. As Evans-Wentz went from village to village interviewing the usually elderly stalwarts of the faith, he descovered that not all of the fairies people encountered in the glens and the moon-dappled meadows were small. Some were tall and looked like normal human beings except they were luminous and translucent and had the curious habit of wearing the clothing of earlier historical periods. Moreover, these "fairies" often appeared in or around archeological ruins -burial mounds, standing stones, crumbling sixth-century fortresses, and so on—and participated in activities associated with bygone times. Evans-Wentz interviewed witnesses who had seen fairies that looked like men in Elizabethan dress engaging in hunts, fairies that walked in ghostly processions to and from the remains of old forts, and fairies that rang bells while standing in the ruins of ancient churches. One activity of which the fairies seemed inordinately fond was waging war. In his book "The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries" Evans-Wentz presents the testimony of dozens of individuals who claimed to see these spectral conflicts, moonlit meadows thronged with men battling in medieval armor, or desolate fens (a marsh) covered with soldiers in colored uniforms. Sometimes these frays (fights, arguments) were eerily silent. Sometimes they were full-fledged dins (continueing and unpleasant noise); and, perhaps most haunting of all, sometimes they could only be heard but not seen. From this, Evans-Wentz concluded that at least some of the phenomena his witnesses were interpreting as fairies were actually some kind of afterimage of events that had taken place in the past. "Nature herself has a memory, " he theorized. "There is some indefinable psychic element in the earth's atmosphere upon which all human and physical actions or phenomena are photographed or impressed. Under certain inexplicable conditions, normal persons who are not seers may observe Nature's mental records like pictures cast upon a screenoften like moving pictures. As for why encounters with fairies were becoming less frequent, a remark made by one of Evans-Wentz's respondents provides a clue. The respondent was an elderly gentleman named John Davies living on the Isle of Man, and after describing numerous sightings of the good people, he stated, "Before education came into the island more people could see the fairies; now very few people can see them." Since "education" no doubt included an anathema against believing in fairies, Davies's remark suggests that it was a change in attitude that caused the widespread retrocognitive abilities of the Manx people to atrophy. Once again this underscores the enormous power our beliefs have in determining which of our extraordinary potentials we manifest and which we do not. But whether our beliefs allow us to see these hologramlike movies of the past or cause our brains to edit them out, the evidence suggests that they exist nonetheless. Nor are such experiences limited to Celtic countries. There are reports of witnesses seeing phantom soldiers dressed in ancient Hindu costumes in India. In Hawaii, such ghostly splays are well known and books on the islands are filled with accounts of individuals who have seen phantom processions of Hawaiian warriors in feather cloaks marching along with war clubs and torches... we must not forget that contained within the shimmering holographic record of the past are all the joys of the human race as well. It is, in essence, a library of all that ever was, and learning to tap into this dazzling and infinite treasure-trove on a more massive and systematic scale could expand our knowledge of both ourselves and the universe in ways we have not yet dared dream."
Bohm's assertion, that every human consciousness has its source in the implicate implies that we all possess the ability to access the future, and this is also supported by the evidence. Jahn and Dunne's discovery that even normal individuals do well in precognitive remote-viewing tests is one indication of the widespread nature of the ability... Similarly, surveys conducted by Louisa Rhine revealed that precognitions occur more frequently than any other kind of psychic experience. Studies also show that precognitive visions tend to be of tragedies, with premonitions of unhappy events outnumbering happy ones by a ratio of 4 to 1 ... Tribal cultures are well aware of this fact, and shamanic traditions almost universally stress how important dreaming is in divining the future. Even our most ancient writings pay homage to the premonitory power of dreams... The antiquity of such traditions indicates that the tendency of premonitions to occur in dreams is due to more than just our current skeptical attitude toward precognition. The proximity the unconscious mind has to the atemporal realm of the implicate may also play a role. Because our dreaming self is deeper in the psyche than our conscious self—and thus closer to the primal ocean in which past, present, and future become one—it may be easier for it to access information about the future... Such incidents strongly suggest that the future is not set, but is plastic and can be changed... Loye provides a possible answer. He believes that reality is a giant hologram, and in it the past, present, and future are indeed fixed, at least up to a point. The rub is that it is not the only hologram. There are many such holographic entities floating in the timeless and spaceless waters of the implicate, jostling and swimming around one another like so many amoebas. "Such holographic entities could also be visualized as parallel worlds, parallel universes, " says Loye. Thus, the future of any given holographic universe is predetermined, and when a person has a precognitive glimpse of the future, they are tuning into the future of that particular hologram only. But like amoebas, these holograms also occasionally swallow and engulf each other, melding and bifurcating like the protoplasmic globs of energy that they really are. Sometimes these jostlings jolt us and are responsible for the premonitions that from time to time engulf us. And when we act upon a premonition and appear to alter the future, what we are really doing is leaping from one hologram to another. Loye calls these intra holographic leaps "hololeaps" and feels that they are what provides us with our true capacity for both insight and freedom. Bohm's and Loye's descriptions seem to be two different ways of trying to express the same thing—a view of the future as a hologram that is substantive enough for us to perceive it, but malleable enough to be susceptible to change. Others have used still different words to sum up what appears to be the same basic thought. Cordero describes the future as a hurricane that is beginning to form and gather momentum, becoming more concrete and unavoidable as it approaches... The Hawaiian kahunas, widely esteemed for their precognitive powers, also speak of the future as fluid, but in the process of "crystallizing and believe that great world events are crystallized furthest in advance, as are the most important events in a person's life, such as marriage, accidents, and death... Loye's notion that there are many separate holographic futures and we choose which events are going to manifest and which are not by leaping from one hologram to another carries with it another implication. Choosing one holographic future over another is essentially the same as creating the future. As we have seen, there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that consciousness plays a significant role in creating the here and now. But if the mind can stray beyond the boundaries of the present and occasionally stalk the misty landscape of the future, do we have a hand in creating future events as well? Put another way, are the vagaries of life truly random, or do we play a role in literally sculpting our own destiny? Remarkably, there is some intriguing evidence that the latter may be the case. Drawing on Pribram's holographic model of the brain, Argentinian physiologist Hugo Zuccarelli recently developed a new recording technique that allows one to create what amounts to holograms made out of sound instead of light. Zuccarelli bases his technique on the curious fact that the human ears actually emit sound. Realizing that these naturally occurring sounds were the audio equivalent of the "reference laser" used to recreate a holographic image, he used them as the basis for a revolutionary new recording technique that reproduces sounds that are even more realistic and three- dimensional than those produced through the stereo process. He calls this new kind of sound "holophonic sound." After listening to one of Zuccarelli's holophonic recordings, a reporter for the Times of London wrote recently,
"I stole a look at the reassuring numbers on my watch to make sure where I was. People approached from behind me where I knew there was only wall.... By the end of seven minutes I was getting the impression of figures, the embodiment of the voices on the tape. It is a multidimensional 'picture' created by sound." Because Zuccarelli's technique is based on the brain's own holographic way of processing sound, it appears to be as successful at fooling the ear as light holograms are at fooling the eyes. As a result, listeners often move their feet when they hear a recording of someone walking in front of them, and move their heads when they hear what sounds like a match being lit too near to their face (some reportedly even smell the match). Remarkably, because a holophonic recording has nothing to do with conventional stereophonic sound, it maintains its eerie three-dimensionality even when one listens to it through only one side of a headphone. The idea, that the universe began in a single, primordial explosion, or Big Bang, is accepted without question by most scientists. And this is odd because, although there are compelling reasons to believe that this is true, no one has ever proved that it is true. On the other hand, if a near-death psychologist were to state flatly that the realm of light NDEers travel to during their experiences is an actual other level of reality, the psychologist would be attacked for making a statement that cannot be proved. And this is odd, for there are equally compelling reasons to believe this is true. In other words, science already accepts what is probable about very important matters if those matters fall into the category of "fashionable things to believe" but not if they fall into the category of "unfashionable things to believe." This double standard must be eliminated before science can begin to make significant inroads into the study of both psychic and spiritual phenomena. Most crucial of all, science must replace its enamorment with objectivity— the idea that the best way to study nature is to be detached, analytical, and dispassionately objective—with a more participatory approach. The importance of this shift has been stressed by numerous researchers, including Harman. We have also seen evidence of its necessity repeatedly throughout this book. In a universe in which the consciousness of a physicist affects the reality of a subatomic particle, the attitude of a doctor affects whether or not a placebo works, the mind of an experimenter affects the way a machine operates, and the imaginal can spill over into physical reality, we can no longer pretend that we are separate from that which we are studying. In a holographic and omnijective universe, a universe in which all things are part of a seamless continuum, strict objectivity ceases to be possible...We are now, there can be no doubt, in the final historical seconds of that crisis—a crisis which involves the end of history, our departure from the planet, [and] the triumph over death. We are, in fact, closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter—the freeing of life from the dark chrysalis of matter."' Of course these are only speculations. But whether we are on the very brink of a transition, as Strieber and McKenna suggest, or whether that watershed is still some ways off in the future, it is apparent that we are following some track of spiritual evolution. Given the holographic nature of the universe, it is also apparent that at least something like the above two possibilities awaits us somewhere and somewhen. And lest we be tempted to assume that freedom from the physical is the end of human evolution, there is evidence that the more plastic and imaginal realm of the hereafter is also a mere stepping stone. For example, Swedenborg said that beyond the heaven he visited was another heaven, one so brilliant and formless to his perceptions that it appeared only as "a streaming of light". NDEers have also occasionally described these even more unfathomably tenuous realms. "There are many higher planes, and to get back to God (rather Creative Force, LM), to reach the plane where ... spirit resides, you have to drop your garment each time until your spirit is truly free, " states one of Whitton's subjects. "The learning process never stops.... Sometimes we are allowed glimpses of the higher planes—each one is lighter and brighter than the one before." It may be frightening to some that reality seems to become increasingly frequency-like as one penetrates deeper into the implicate."
And perhaps that is why the beings of light tell us again and again that the purpose of life is to learn. We are indeed on a shaman's journey, mere children struggling to become technicians of the sacred. We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one lesson stands out above all others. As long as the formlessness and breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue to dream a hologram for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well defined. But we must always heed Bohm's warning that the conceptual pigeonholes we use to parse out the universe are of our own making. They do not exist "out there, " for "out there" is only the indivisible totality. Brahman. And when we outgrow any given set of conceptual pigeonholes we must always be prepared to move on, to advance from soul-state to soul-state, as Sri Aurobindo put it, and from illumination to illumination. For our purpose appears to be as simple as it is endless. We are, as the aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity."
Perhaps most astonishing of all is, that there is compelling evidence, that the only time quanta ever manifest as Particles, is when we are looking at them. For instance, when an electron isn't being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a Wave. Physicists are able to draw this conclusion because they have devised clever strategies for deducing how an electron behaves when it is not being observed (it should be noted that this is only one interpretation of the evidence and is not the conclusion of all physicists; as we will see, Bohm himself has a different interpretation)...quanta coalesce (turn) into particles only when they are being observed..."Likewise humans can never experience the true texture of quantum reality," says Herbert, "because everything we touch turns to matter"...One physicist, who was troubled by Bohr's assertions was Einstein (a Jew). Despite the role Einstein had played in the founding of quantum theory, he was not at all happy with the course the fledgling science had taken. He found Bohr's conclusion, that a particle's properties don't exist until they are observed, particularly objectionable because, when combined with another of quantum physics's findings, it implied, that subatomic particles were interconnected in a way Einstein simply didn't believe was possible...Consider an extremely unstable atom physicists call positronium. The positronium atom is composed of an electron and a positron (a positron is an electron with a positive charge). Because a positron is the electron's antiparticle opposite, the two eventually annihilate each other and turn into two quanta of Light (or the Energy of Balance) or "photons", traveling in opposite directions (the capacity to shape-shift from one kind of particle to another is just another of a quantum's abilities)...In 1935 Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published a now famous paper entitled "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?"
The problem is that according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster, than the speed of light, let alone travel instantaneously, for that would be tantamount to breaking the time barrier and would open the door on all kinds of unacceptable paradoxes. ('Positronium decay is not the subatomic process Einstein and his colleagues employed in their thought experiment, but is used here, because it is easy to visualize.) Einstein and his colleagues were convinced, that no "reasonable definition" of reality would permit such faster-than-light interconnections to exist, and therefore Bohr had to be wrong. Their argument is now known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, or EPR paradox for short. Bohr remained unperturbed by Einstein's argument. Rather, than believing, that some kind of faster-than-light communication was taking place, he offered another explanation. If subatomic particles do not exist until they are observed, then one could no longer think of them as independent "things". Thus Einstein was basing his argument on an error when he viewed twin particles as separate. They were part of an indivisible (incapable of being divided) system, and it was meaningless to think of them otherwise. In time most physicists sided with Bohr and became content, that his interpretation was correct. One factor, that contributed to Bohr's triumph was, that quantum physics had proved so spectacularly successful in predicting phenomena, few physicists were willing even to consider the possibility, that it might be faulty in some way. In addition, when Einstein and his colleagues first made their proposal about twin particles, technical and other reasons prevented such an experiment from actually being performed. This made it even easier to put out of mind. This was curious, for although Bohr had designed his argument to counter Einstein's attack on quantum theory, as we will see, Bohr's view, that subatomic systems are indivisible has equally profound implications for the nature of reality. Ironically, these implications were also ignored, and once again the potential importance of interconnectedness was swept under the carpet...
A Plasma is a gas containing a high density of electrons and positive ions, atoms, that have a positive charge. To his (Bohm) amazement he found, that once they were in a Plasma, electrons stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving, as if they were part of a larger and Interconnected Whole. Although their individual movements appeared random, vast numbers of electrons were able to produce effects, that were surprisingly well-organized. Like some Amoeboid Creature, the Plasma constantly regenerated itself and enclosed all impurities in a wall in the same way, that a biological organism might encase a foreign substance in a cyst.
So struck was Bohm by these organic qualities, that he later remarked, he'd frequently had the impression the Electron Sea was "Alive."

In 1947 Bohm accepted an assistant professorship at Princeton University, an indication of how highly he was regarded, and there he extended his Berkeley research to the study of electrons in metals. Once again he found, that the seemingly haphazard movements of individual electrons managed to produce highly organized overall effects. Like the Plasmas he had studied at Berkeley, these were no longer situations involving two particles, each behaving as if it knew what the other was doing, but entire oceans of particles, each behaving as if it knew what untold trillions of others were doing. Bohm called such collective movements of electrons plasmons...

Существует ли реальность или всё вокруг лишь голограмма? (прекрасная статья, ЛМ)

http://earth-chronicles.ru/news/2015-07-21-82153
В 1982 годy пpоизошло замечательное событие. Исследовательская гpyппа под pyководством Alain Aspect пpи yнивеpситете в Паpиже пpедставила экспеpимент, котоpый стал одним из самых значительных в 20 веке. Aspect и его гpyппа обнаpyжили, что в опpеделенных yсловиях элементаpные частицы, напpимеp, электpоны, способны мгновенно сообщаться дpyг с дpyгом независимо от pасстояния междy ними. Hе имеет значения, 10 фyтов междy ними или 10 миллиаpдов миль. Каким-то обpазом каждая частица всегда знает, что делает дpyгая. Пpоблема этого откpытия в том, что оно наpyшает постyлат Эйнштейна о пpедельной скоpости pаспpостpанения взаимодействия, pавной скоpости света. Физик лондонского yнивеpситета David Bohm считает, что согласно откpытию Aspect, pеальная действительность не сyществyет, и что несмотpя на ее очевиднyю плотность, вселенная в своей основе — фикция, гигантская, pоскошно детализиpованная гологpамма. Гологpамма пpедставляет собой тpехмеpнyю фотогpафию, сдлеланнyю с помощью лазеpа. Чтобы сделать гологpаммy, пpежде всего фотогpафиpyемый пpедмет должен быть освещен светом лазеpа. Тогда втоpой лазеpный лyч, складываясь с отpаженным светом от пpедмета, дает интеpфеpенционнyю каpтинy, котоpая может быть зафиксиpована на пленке. Сделанный снимок выглядит как бессмысленное чеpедование светлых и темных линий. Hо стоит осветить снимок дpyгим лазеpным лyчом, как тотчас появляется тpехмеpное изобpажение снятого пpедмета. Тpехмеpность — не единственное замечательное свойство гологpамм. Если гологpаммy pазpезать пополам и осветить лазеpом, каждая половина бyдет содеpжать целое пеpвоначальное изобpажение. Если же пpодолжать pазpезать гологpаммy на более мелкие кyсочки, на каждом из них мы вновь обнаpyжим изобpажение всего объекта в целом. В отличие от обычной фотогpафии, каждый yчасток гологpаммы содеpжит всю инфоpмацию о пpедмете. Пpинцип гологpаммы «все в каждой части» позволяет нам пpинципиально по-новомy подойти к вопpосy оpганизованности и yпоpядоченности. Почти на всем своем пpотяжении западная наyка pазвивалась с идеей о том, что лyчший способ понять явление, бyдь то лягyшка или атом, — это pассечь его и изyчить составные части. Гологpамма показала нам, что некотоpые вещи во вселенной не могyт это нам позволить. Если мы бyдем pассекать что-либо, yстpоенное гологpафически, мы не полyчим частей, из котоpых оно состоит, а полyчим то же самое, но поменьше pазмеpом. Bohm yвеpен, что элементаpные частицы взаимодействyют на любом pасстоянии не потомy, что они обмениваются таинственными сигналами междy собой, а потомy, что pазделенность есть иллюзия. Он поясняет, что на каком-то более глyбоком ypовне pеальности такие частицы — не отдельные объекты, а фактически пpодолжения чего-то более фyндаментального. Чтобы это лyчше yяснить, Bohm пpедлагает следyющyю иллюстpацию. Пpедставьте себе акваpиyм с pыбой. Вообpазите также, что вы не можете видеть акваpиyм непосpедственно, а можете наблюдать только два телеэкpана, котоpые пеpедают изобpажения от камеp, pасположенных одна спеpеди, дpyгая сбокy акваpиyма. Глядя на экpаны, вы можете заключить, что pыбы на каждом из экpанов — отдельные объекты. Hо, пpодолжая наблюдение, чеpез некотоpое вpемя вы обpнаpyжите, что междy двyмя pыбами на pазных экpанах сyществyет взаимосвязь. Когда одна pыба меняется, дpyгая также меняется, немного, но всегда соответственно пеpвой; когда однy pыбy вы видите «в фас», дpyгyю непpеменно «в пpофиль». Если вы не знаете, что это один и тот же акваpиyм, вы скоpее заключите, что рыбы должны как-то моментально общаться дpyг с дpyгом, чем что это слyчайность. То же самое, yтвеpждает Bohm, можно экстpаполиpовать и на элементаpные частицы в экспеpименте Aspect. Явное свеpхсветовое взаимодействие междy частицами говоpит нам, что сyществyет более глyбокий ypовень pеальности, скpытый от нас, более высокой pазмеpности, чем наша, по аналогии с акваpиyмом. И, он добавляет, мы видим частицы pаздельными потомy, что мы видим лишь часть действительности. Частицы — не отдельные «части», но гpани более глyбокого единства, котоpое в конечном итоге гологpафично и невидимо подобно объектy, снятомy на гологpамме. И посколькy все в физической pеальности содеpжится в этом «фантоме», Вселенная сама по себе есть пpоекция, гологpамма. Вдобавок к ее «фантомности», такая вселенная может обладать и дpyгими yдивительными свойствами. Если разделение частиц — это иллюзия, значит, на более глyбоком ypовне все пpедметы в миpе бесконечно взаимосвязаны. Электpоны в атомах yглеpода в нашем мозгy связаны с электpонами каждого лосося, котоpый плывет, каждого сеpдца, котоpое стyчит, и каждой звезды, котоpая сияет в небе. Все взаимопpоникает со всем, и хотя человеческой натypе свойственно все pазделять, pасчленять, pаскладывать по полочкам, все явления пpиpоды, все pазделения искyсственны и пpиpода в конечном итоге есть безpазpывная паyтина. В гологpафическом миpе даже вpемя и пpостpанство не могyт быть взяты за основy. Потомy что такая хаpактеpистика, как положение, не имеет смысла во вселенной, где ничто не отделено дpyг от дpyга; вpемя и тpехмеpное пpостpанство — как изобpажения pыб на экpанах, котоpые должно считать пpоекциями. Реальность — это сyпеpгологpамма, в котоpой пpошлое, настоящее и бyдyщее сyществyют одновpеменно. Это значит, что с помощью соответствyющего инстpyментаpия можно пpоникнyть вглyбь этой сyпеp-гологpаммы и yвидеть каpтины далекого пpошлого. Что еще может нести в себе гологpамма — еще неизвестно. Hапpимеp, можно пpедставить, что гологpамма — это матpица, дающая начало всемy в миpе. Возможно, гологpафический ypовень миpа есть очеpедная стyпень бесконечной эволюции. Bohm не одинок в своем мнении. Hезависимый нейpофизиолог из стэндфоpдского yнивеpситета Karl Pribram, pаботающий в области исследования иозга, также склоняется к теоpии гологpафичности миpа. Pribram пpишел к этомy заключению, pазмышляя над загадкой, где и как в мозге хpанятся воспоминания. Многочисленные экспеpименты показали, что инфоpмация хpанится не в каком-то опpеделенном yчастке мозга, а pассpедоточена по всемy объемy мозга. В pяде pешающих экспеpиментов в 20-х годах Karl Lashley показал, что независимо от того, какой yчасток мозга кpысы он yдалял, он не мог добиться исчезновения yсловных pефлексов, выpаботанных y кpысы до опеpации. Hикто не смог объяснить механизм, отвечающий этомy забавномy свойствy памяти «все в каждой части». Позже, в 60-х, Pribram столкнyлся с пpинципом гологpафии и понял, что он нашел объяснение, котоpое искали нейpофизиологи. Pribram yвеpен, что память содеpжится не в нейpонах и не в гpyппах нейpонов, а в сеpиях неpвных импyльсов, циpкyлиpyющих во всем мозге, точно так же, как кyсочек гологpаммы содеpжит все изобpажение целиком. Дpyгими словами, Pribram yвеpен, что мозг есть гологpамма. Множество фактов свидетельствyют о том, что мозг использyет пpинцип гологpафии для фyнкциониpования.
Аpгентино-итальянский исследователь Hugo Zucarelli недавно pасшиpил гологpафическyю модель на область акyстических явлений. Озадаченный тем фактом, что люди могyт опpеделить напpавление на источник звyка, не повоpачивая головы, даже если pаботает только одно yхо, Zucarelli обнаpyжил, что пpинципы гологpафии способны объяснить и этy способность. Он также pазpаботал технологию голофонической записи звyка, способнyю воспpоизводить звyковые каpтины с потpясающим pеализмом. Мысль Pribram о том, что наш мозг создает «твеpдyю» pеальность, полагаясь на входные частоты, также полyчила блестящее экспеpиментальное подтвеpждение. Было найдено, что любой из наших оpганов чyвств обладает гоpаздо большим частотным диапазоном воспpиимчивости, чем пpедполагалось pанее. Hапpимеp, исследователи обнаpyжили, что наши оpганы зpения воспpиимчивы к звyковым частотам, что наше обоняние несколько зависит от того, что сейчас называется [ osmic? ] частоты, и что даже клетки нашего тела чyвствительны к шиpокомy диапазонy частот. Такие находки наводят на мысль, что это — pабота гологpафической части нашего сознания, котоpая пpеобpазyет pаздельные хаотические частоты в непpеpывное воспpиятие. Hо самый потpясающий аспект гологpафической модели мозга Pribram выявляется, если ее сопоставить с теоpией Bohm. Если то, что мы видим, лишь отpажение того, что на самом деле «там» является набоpом гологpафических частот, и если мозг — тоже гологpамма и лишь выбиpает некотоpые из частот и математически их пpеобpазyет в воспpиятия, что же на самом деле есть объективная pеальность? Скажем пpоще — ее не сyществyет. Как испокон веков yтвеpждают восточные pелигии, матеpия есть Майя, иллюзия, и хотя мы можем дyмать, что мы физические и движемся в физическом миpе, это тоже иллюзия. Hа самом деле мы «пpиемники», плывyщие в калейдоскопическом моpе частот, и все, что мы извлекаем из этого моpя и пpевpащаем в физическyю pеальность, всего лишь один источник из множества, извлеченных из гологpаммы. Во вселенной, в котоpой отдельный мозг есть фактически неделимая часть большой гологpаммы и бесконечно связана с дpyгими, телепатия может быть пpосто достижением гологpафического ypовня. Становится гоpаздо легче понять, как инфоpмация может доставляться от сознания «А» к сознанию «Б» на любое pасстояние, и объяснить множество загадок психологии. В частности, Grof пpедвидит, что гологpафическая паpадигма сможет пpедложить модель для объяснения многих загадочных феноменов, наблюдающихся людьми во вpемя измененного состояния сознания. В 50-х годах, во вpемя пpоведения исследований ЛСД в качестве психотеpапевтического пpепаpата, y Grof была женщина-пациент, котоpая внезапно пpишла к yбеждению, что она есть самка доистоpической pептилии. Во вpемя галлюцинации она дала не только богато детализиpованное описание того, как это — быть сyществом, обладающим такими фоpмами, но и отметила цветнyю чешyю на голове y самца того же вида. Grof был поpажен обстоятельством, что в беседе с зоологом подтвеpдилось наличие цветной чешyи на голове y pептилий, игpающей важнyю pоль для бpачных игp, хотя женщина pанее не имела понятия о таких тонкостях. Опыт этой женщины не был yникален. Во вpемя его исследований он сталкивался с пациентами, возвpащающимися по лестнице эволюции и отождествляющими себя с самыми pазными видами (на их основе постpоена сцена пpевpащения человека в обезъянy в фильме «Измененные состояния»). Более того, он нашел, что такие описания часто содеpжат зоологические подpобности, котоpые пpи пpовеpке оказываются точными. Возвpат к животным — не единственный феномен, описанный Grof’ом. У него также были пациенты, котоpые, по-видимомy, могли подключаться к своего pода области коллективного или pасового бессознательного. Hеобpазованные или малообpазованные люди внезапно давали детальные описания похоpон в зоpоастpийской пpактике либо сцены из индyсской мифологии. В дpyгих опытах люди давали yбедительное описание внетелесных пyтешествий, пpедсказания каpтин бyдyщего, пpошлых воплощений.В более поздних исследованиях Grof обнаружил, что тот же ряд феноменов проявлялся и в сеансах терапии, не включающих применение лекарств. Поскольку общим элементом таких экспериментов явилось расширение сознания за границы пространства и времени, Grof назвал такие проявления "трансперсональным опытом", и в конце 60-х благодаря ему появилась новая ветвь психологии, названная "трансперсональной" психологией, посвященная целиком этой области. Хотя и вновь созданная ассоциация Трансперсональной психологии представляла собой быстро растущую группу профессионалов-единомышленников и стала уважаемой ветвью психологии, ни сам Grof, ни его коллеги не могли предложить механизма, объясняющего странные психологические явления, которые они наблюдали. Но это изменилось с приходом голографической парадигмы. Как недавно отмечал Grof, если сознание фактически есть часть континуума, лабиринт, соединенный не только с каждым другим сознанием, существующим или существовавшим, но и с каждым атомом, организмом и необъятной областью пространства и времени, тот факт, что могут случайно образовываться тоннели в лабиринте и наличие трансперсонального опыта более не кажутся столь странными. Голографическая парадигма также накладывает отпечаток на так называемые точные науки, например биологию. Keith Floyd, психолог Колледжа Intermont в Virginia, указал, что если реальность есть всего лишь голографическая иллюзия, то нельзя дальше утверждать, что сознание есть функция мозга. Скорее, наоборот, сознание создает мозг - так же, как тело и все наше окружение мы интерпретируем как физическое. Такой переворот наших взглядов на биологические структуры позволил исследователям указать, что медицина и наше понимание процесса выздоровления также могут измениться под влиянием голографической парадигмы (перемена уровня сознания). Если физическое тело не более чем голографическая проекция нашего сознания, становится ясным, что каждый из нас более ответсвенен за свое здоровье, чем это позволяют достижения медицины. То, что мы сейчас наблюдаем как кажущиееся лечение болезни, в действительности может быть сделано путем изменения сознания, которое внесет соответствующие коррективы в голограмму тела. Аналогично, альтернативные методики лечения, такие, например, как визуализация, могут работать успешно, поскольку голографическая суть мыслеобразов в конечном итоге столь же реальна, как и "реальность". Даже откровения и переживания потустороннего становятся объяснимыми с точки зрения новой парадигмы. Биолог Lyall Watson в своей книге "Дары неизведанного" описывает встречу с индонезийской женщиной-шаманом, которая, совершая ритуальный танец, была способна заставить мгновенно исчезнуть в тонком мире целую рощу деревьев. Watson пишет, что пока он и еще один удивленный свидетель продолжали наблюдать за ней, она заставила деревья исчезать и появляться несколько раз подряд. Современная наука неспособна объяснить такие явления. Но они становятся вполне логичными, если допустить, что наша "плотная" реальность не более чем голографическая проекция. Возможно, мы сможем сформулировать понятия "здесь" и "там" точнее, если определим их на уровне человеческого бессознательного, в котором все сознания бесконечно тесно взаимосвязаны. Если это так, то в целом это наиболее значительное следствие из голографической парадигмы, имея в виду, что явления, наблюдавшиеся Watson, не общедоступны только потому, что наш разум не запрограммирован доверять им, что могло бы сделать их таковыми. В голографической вселенной отсутствуют рамки возможностей для изменения ткани реальности. То, что мы называем действительностью, есть лишь холст, ожидающий, пока мы начертаем на нем любую картину, какую пожелаем. Все возможно, от сгибания ложек усилием воли, до фантасмагорических сцен в духе Кастанеды в его занятиях с Доном Хуаном, для магии, которой мы владеем изначально, не более и не менее кажущейся, чем наша способность создавать любые миры в своих фантазиях. Действительно, даже большинство наших "фундаментальных" знаний сомнительно, в то время как в голографической реальности, на которую указывает Pribram, даже случайные события могли бы быть объяснены и определены с помощью голографических принципов. Совпадения и случайности внезапно обретают смысл, и все что угодно может рассматриваться как метафора, даже цепь случайных событий выражает какую-то глубинную симметрию. Голографическая парадигма Bohm и Pribram, получит ли она дальнейшее развитие или уйдет в небытие, так или иначе можно утверждать, что она уже приобрела популярность у многих ученых. Даже если будет установлено, что голографическая модель неудовлетворительно описывает мгновенное взаимодействие элементарных частиц, по крайней мере, как указывает физик Байрбэкского колледжа в Лондоне Basil Hiley, открытие Aspect "показало, что мы должны быть готовы рассматривать радикально новые подходы для понимания реальности".

Early death

Michael Talbot died in 1992 from Leukemia at the age of 38. Whitley Strieber refers to Michael Talbot as his "dear friend" on his website and praises him in eulogy.
The Holographic Universe - 1991
http://www.secretbeyondmatter.com (Aug. 2018 update- this link now fails to connect to its website! In Russian: Адрес видео или сайта не работает больше!)

The Holographic Thinking
http://www.artbridge.de/ab/images/pdf/art008.pdf

The Holographic Universe - Beyond Matter part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ic0MmHKCk&feature=related

The Holographic Universe - Beyond Matter part2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3NSmU2D0A&feature=related

The Holographic Universe - Beyond Matter part3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVKFtluLceU&feature=related

Secret Beyond Matter 2 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dk5BjB_w1E&feature=related

Secret beyond matter Part 3 (good sound 2008 edition )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqJT13keCUk&feature=related

Glenda Green - 2012 Time Space Experience - Part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZDqNDQFnZw&feature=related

Glenda Green - Holographic Universe Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9OmD0ZHhCk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnvM_YAwX4I&feature=related
Holographic Universe (Part 1 of 2 ) its all illusion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9FO7JGWq4&feature=related
Holographic Universe ( Part 2 0f 2 ) its all illusion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTCMSAhkaLI&feature=related
Glenda Green - Holographic Universe Part 2

Holograms For Medical Studies....
https://youtu.be/SKpKlh1-en0

Медики будут учиться в виртуальной реальности - video

http://earth-chronicles.ru/news/2015-07-10-81777
Студенты-медики из этого университета смогут впервые увидеть учебный материал в виде виртуальных образов, а не просто иллюстраций в учебниках. Microsoft сотрудничает с преподавателями медицины, чтобы максимально точно воплотить необходимые образовательные образы в виде объёмных проекций для HoloLens. Только представьте себе, что вы сможете видеть человеческие органы в мельчайших подробностях, увеличивать их и осматривать со всех сторон, раскладывать на составляющие и видеть названия отдельных их частей. Гарнитуры можно будет использовать в учебных аудиториях, где преподаватель будет выделять участки 3D-моделей, о которых он рассказывает студентам. Также HoloLens вполне можно применять во время экзамена, когда учащийся будет выбирать из появляющихся перед ним вариантов ответа единственно верный.

PARALLEL PERSONALITIES OF DIFFERENT VIBRATIONS

Разработаны тактильные голограммы

Michael Talbot's Talks on Youtube

Holographic Universe (Part 1 of 5 ) its all illusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnvM_YAwX4I&feature=related

Michael Talbot - Hollographic Realities 2 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2vEDhRc91M&feature=related

Michael Talbot - Hollographic Realities 3 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YImZEC1iqPA&feature=related

Michael Talbot - Hollographic Realities 4 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm1-qtL6O7s&feature=related

Michael Talbot - Hollographic Realities 5 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHJmGTgX_fI&NR=1

Michael Talbot - Hollographic Realities 6 of 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isxQpnFRo7E&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isxQpnFRo7E&NR=1

Michael Talbot: Synchronicity and the Holographic Universe -- Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ-3m5W4cp4&feature=related

Karl Pribram: The Holographic Brain (excerpt) - A Thinking Allowed DVD with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHpTYs6GJhQ&feature=relmfu

02- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeOZmRvCV0U&NR=1

03 Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum mechanical model of David Bohm Part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O63v7F6tTxI&NR=1

04- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiU6atKy5ok&NR=1

05- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLCbKCFYLmk&NR=1

06- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCnAD9rZ9Wk&NR=1

07 Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum mechanical model of David Bohm Part7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR5b0xbD_80&NR=1

08- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmYs4BF6dR4&NR=1

09- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gIYZ0Hm644&NR=1

10- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd-f6OZ7C0Q&NR=1

11- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpYln2XdGv4&NR=

13- Taher Gozel interview with Basil Hiley on Wholistic quantum model of David Bohm Part 13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSUM4GSWjYE&NR=1

Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeaOypoMCSA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdIn2BqCDrA&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU4IVrVfS7s&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fihu3aqo27c&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29bQKxWIlY0&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 6)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4gZefq8vdg&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part7)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joaPQlX-t0&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdL9nlZVXzw&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 9)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-0OhBT8lAE&feature=related
Michael Talbot Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 10)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjM3TSXzJ0s&feature=related
Michael Talbot Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 11)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cVh5oj4ZIU&feature=related
Michael Talbot Rare Holographic universe workshop (Part 12)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPX981C546Q&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Holographic Universe part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV5reO40iX8&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Holographic Universe part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSVPGr-p1Ww&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Holographic Universe Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUTW3dsSoVk&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Holographic Universe Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fihu3aqo27c&feature=related
Michael Talbot - Holographic Universe Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYeNo_oGCmg&feature=related
John Michael Talbot, Personal Testimony 1/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbd2uVYi9WE&feature=related
John Michael Talbot, Personal Testimony 2/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTmZj5NzQA&feature=related
John Michael Talbot, Personal Testimony 3/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al4O7xYoYf0&feature=related
John Michael Talbot, Personal Testimony 4/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9pyGlO4YLM&feature=related
John Michael Talbot, Personal Testimony 5/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpHNJaikup0&feature=related
john michael talbot in concert

John Michael Talbot Interview #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lUDM0QC2I&feature=related

Holographic Universe (Part 1 of 2 ) its all illusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnvM_YAwX4I

Holographic Universe ( Part 2 0f 2 ) its all illusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9FO7JGWq4&NR=

The Quantum Apocalypse of The Holographic Universe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dpRPTwsKJs&feature=related

The holographic nature of the Universe - Gregg Braden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ih3RoDASkw&feature=related

SOURCE OF ALL SUNS - HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE

Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe"

The Reaction of the Scientific Community

Michael Talbot's Talks on Youtube