Reality and the Holographic Universe (Part 1)

Posted on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by Lily Wong in Spirituality

Part 1: The Holographic Paradigm

It intrigued and scared me as a child when I learned that the Earth wasn't the only planet in the Universe. I would look up in the sky with fascination and wondered if one of the planets was where Heaven is. If so, where's hell? Were there planets under the ground I walked too? Amid the darken sky with twinkling diamond stars, I also wondered if there were other people like me living there.

Big questions for a small kid.

It also scared me out of my little soul each time I looked at the picture of planets orbiting in a black abyss called the Universe. Because suddenly the Earth, which seemed to be an already infinite place to me then, seemed small, and even vulnerable. What if the sun decided to sputter out a tiny flaming rock? End of us. That thought used to make me shudder.

Now, it intrigued and still scared me a little as I learned about how the world is but an illusion. So if all around me is not real, I am not real, what is real then? If nothing is real, then what's the point of existing? Is there meaning to anything at all? Where do I find the truth? But firstly, what is the truth?

Still a big question for a kid already all grown up. But those are vital questions that open the gates towards my spiritual path.

In the following series of posts I explore the subject of reality. It's not exhaustive, of course.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

    “Somewhere there is a dream dreaming us.”

Think about this: if we are in a dream now, and this dream is within another dream that is dreamed in the dreamer's dream, where is reality?

And who's this dreamer that's dreaming us?

This one twists the mind more than the tongue.

Having explored the age-old questions of "Who am I?"and "What is Life?", it ultimately leads to questioning: what really is reality?

I recall the many times when I was dreaming, for that dream-moment, everything was my reality - whether I was on a flying carpet or breathing under water. On the other hand, ironically, there are instances in my waking life where I spaced out and everything seemed so unreal that I had to pinch myself to feel if it was all real. As I type, it makes me wonder if I am typing this in my waking life or in one of my dreams. Or even if both existed. Again, what is reality?

The Holographic Universe
Michael Talbot (1953-1992), the author of a number of books which highlight the parallels between ancient mysticism and quantum mechanics, said that there's no reality because the Universe is a hologram.

No reality? Yes, ponder that.

In his book, The Holographic Universe, Talbot espoused the theoretical model of reality, suggesting the physical universe is akin to a giant hologram. Talbot made many references to the work of David Bohm and Karl Pribram, and it is quite apparent that the combined work of Bohm and Pribram is largely the cornerstone upon which Talbot built his ideas.

In the abstract from The Holographic Universe , the holographic paradigm was explained and backed by some interesting scientific findings. I have picked out some of the paragraphs that I feel will hit home for many, like myself, who are on the quest to find the "truth". Give it a shot and see if it rings true for you.

The boundaries between science and spirituality have always been a blur. It's the same thing - in fact, I see them as the SAME side of a coin. Both search for the truth, except one has solid physical proof and the other is based on intuitive knowing. So no need to toss a coin to see which side wins.

But today, here's the question: is solid proof solidly real? How do you know if it's real, if science is real? If you have read Talbot's Holographic Universe, this question would have you contemplating about who, what, when, how and why you are here.

[* The text below in Italics are paragraphs from the book abstract. Following those are my thoughts. I welcome anyone to give your two cents on this subject - so leave a comment. ]

All For One

    In 1982, physicist Alain Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein’s long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. This insight suggested to another physicist at University of London, David Bohm, another way of understanding Aspect’s discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

A "fundamental something" - I believe it is a reference to All That Is, the Tao (that thing that has no-name); or perhaps God. But I like to call it the Source: the nameless, timeless, spaceless no-thing from which all life and all that exist in life is created.

I feel the first step to understanding the concept of Being One with All That Is, or the idea of Wholeness, is there is no separate-ness. A simple concept, but one that is difficult to really comprehend, because how do we really explain a separate "I"or "You" , when you are obviously physically separated from everything and everyone around you - through skin, through space, through time.

What I could understand from here is that the separation we are experiencing are just a physical-sensual experiences. And the idea of Being One, and the concept of Wholeness has less to do with physical senses. It could be more like a connectedness of informational energy, much like the World Wide Web.

This brings to mind what Dr.Ong, a spiritual speaker, had mentioned in his Spiritual and Science talk: the Universe is like the www, and all beings are the computers - we are connected and the information is always readily available for us to tap into.

That's a useful analogy to understand the concept of Oneness in which the core of the holographic paradigm is based upon.

Fish Eye View

    To enable people to better visualize what he means (about holographic paradigms), Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium’s front and the other directed at its side.As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case. This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect’s experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality. Such particles are not separate “parts”, but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these “eidolons”, the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

I see the fish in the aquarium as life, and one of the camera angles as our eyes, our perception. Reality, our reality, is distorted as it tells only one side of the story. In fact, is the fish even real? Perhaps it's an image projection from another aquarium which had been mirrored from another side.

Thing is until we really move away from that single camera angle and test out the other, can we see that reality is only as real as we perceive it to be. And until we remove the cameras and reach into the aquarium to place the fish in our hands, can we actually find the truth? Even then, it might not be the whole truth. Think out of box, they say aptly; in this case, the aquarium.

So which is the real reality? Angle A or B? Or Y or Z? None of the above. Life is a trick question sometimes. For both can be real if you want them to be real, since like the holographic concept illustrates, everything are illusions.

Made of Maya

    For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is “there” is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist.As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion. We are really “receivers” floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

The realization of Maya has quite a wistful, melancholy twist. I mean, if reality ceases to exist, what is there left? Yet it holds the lesson of letting go and living in the present moment.

Still there are others who choose to blindfold themselves. It's much like wanting to stay in a dream long after you have woken up because your perceived reality is too harsh. Delusion is the other side of the coin: staying in self-imposed lies even when you know your actions, thoughts and behavior no longer lead you to your higher path. Or living life like a puppet where your strings are pulled by someone else; where sometimes that someone else is your Ego. Now, that is being caught in illusions.

The way I see it, the Maya is empowering, if you choose to see it that way. Free Will always has the final say.

Continued...Part 2: Living Holographically >>

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