This image is a representation of a hologram. This means that it is three dimensional and projected from a very special kind of film (picture in the main text below). Our current level of holographic technology is very primitive; we are only capable of projecting a holographic image into the air if it reflects off of smoke or mist. And we are just beginning to explore the implications for human consciousness.

[Image from www.abcgallery.com/D/dali/dali219.html]

   Our conceptualization of the universe and of our own consciousness seems to parallel our worldview. Early humans, when they thought about it and weren’t too busy just surviving, blended into the landscape of the natural world. They were one with it and saw themselves as an integral part of the circle of life, no better or lesser than any other component. They were siblings of the plants and animals, sharing a common mother, the Earth.

    Agrarian societies, no doubt, followed this line of thinking, with a twist -- because they now could grow their own food and husband their domesticated animals, they believed they had more control over their fate. They did not care that they were now tied to a location, that is until drought forced them to move or die. Nor did they remember that their hunter-gatherer ancestors worked fewer hours. Deeply embedded in our psyche is a belief that technology makes life better. Nor will I argue this point here; it is sufficient to make note of it.

    Our next leap was into industrialization. Although we have taken the next step into a new socio-economic model, the industrialized mindset is still very much with us. It is very linear, having taken on a clockwork, mechanistic view of the universe and of our own consciousness. This model is currently being called the Cartesian model, after French philosopher René Descartes. Those who view the world and themselves within the Cartesian / industrial framework will see the mind as a kind of machine, Aristotelian (linear) logic prevails, we are simply stimulus-response machines made of meat instead of metal, burning food instead of coal or oil. Mainstream science is pretty much still parked in this particular lot.

    Each of the above two later socio-economic models also created a revolution in every way, overturning current culture and creating chaos as the old way of life was destroyed. Mankind has always been territorial and I am sure we had our hunting grounds staked out and defended from other hunting bands. However, with agriculture came the beginning of the end of the nomadic way of following the four-legged food sources around with the seasons. We settled down. We formed nations and war became a very serious business. Our hunter-gatherer aggressiveness became martial as, no longer satisfied with what the Great Mother provided, we sought to conquer more territories in order to exploit more resources for our unsustainable population growth. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors understood about sustainable living. We soon forgot.

    With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, humanity began a great migration from the farms into the cities, where the work was perceived to be. Machines replaced human beings on the farms, but machines and factories created new work. This was a horrendously painful time and there was much starvation, disease and exploitation of desperate people. It also was the impetus behind the creation of labor unions and child labor laws. And just when we were comfortably settled into this model, someone invented the transistor and the A-bomb and Einstein introduced us to quantum spookiness.

    The newly emerging socioeconomic model has not been properly named yet. Perhaps this is a privilege not given to the parents but to the inheritors. What will our great-grandchildren call this era? The Computer Revolution? The Quantum Era? We may not know how history will see it, but it has taken enough shape to begin to define it and to see human consciousness through its worldview.

Presupposition 10: Quantum consciousness is holographic, as is the entire Universe.

    The two fathers of the holographic model were David Bohm, a protege of Einstein, and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist. The two scientists, one the world’s foremost quantum physicist and the other the author of the definitive text in neuropsychology (Languages of the Brain), came to the conclusion independently that the holographic model explained a “wide range of phenomena so elusive they generally have been categorized outside the province of scientific understanding” including telepathy, precognition, feelings of oneness with everything, and psychokinesis.

    Dr. Stanislav Grof, the chief of psychiatric research at Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, concluded that only a holographic model could explain the various phenomena associated with “altered states” of consciousness. (This begs the question, “Altered from what?”)

    Your body is holographic: every cell contains the blueprint for every other cell of the body. The DNA in a muscle cell in your leg is identical to the DNA in a cell of the skin lining your mouth. Every cell contains the blueprint for the whole body. And this is the defining characteristic of holography.

    The hologram is a paradox. In space / time, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. However, holographically speaking, just one of its parts equals the whole and the size of the part does not matter at all!

    Holographic film is unique and fascinating. I’m not talking about the thin commercial layers of film that are embossed on various objects for visual effect. We are looking at the film through which light is projected to form a hologram in mid-air, like the one at the top of this essay. If you take a whole piece of holographic film containing a picture of a landscape and cut the film in half, each half will project the entire landscape. With regular film, each half will project the half of the landscape contained on it. Take the holographic film piece and cut it in half again and it will still project the whole landscape originally pictured. This will go on indefinitely.

    Looking at a normal piece of film, you see an image of  the original. However, looking at a piece of holographic film, you see interference patterns (below). These interference patterns are created by the technology of hologram photography. [See final section below, “How a Hologram Is Made,” if you are interested in the technology.]

    The image above is a normal photograph of a sheet of holographic film. No matter what the image it will project, it looks to the naked eye like the surface of a pond after scattering a handful of pebbles into it. Notice the interference patterns as the “ripples” seem to collide with each other. These interference patterns are necessary to the creation of a holographic image. If you cut this piece of film into many pieces, any one piece contains the whole image.

Corollary A: The patterns caused by interference are vital and necessary to the creation of the holographic universe.

    The interference patterns manifest in our day-to-day existence as problems (see, “Problem Solving and the Ethical Uses of Force”). It is how we handle this interference that shows our level of spiritual maturity. We can go to war or we can choose among the many peaceful methods of mediating conflict. If we choose peace, the interference pattern ends right there. If we choose violence, we set up a new interference pattern that perpetuates the problem. As long as there are individuals, there will be interference patterns generated. It is inevitable. How we handle the conflict is up to us.

Corollary B: Our brains must interpret the interference patterns in order to form the images we “see” inside our heads.

    What our eyes actually see probably looks more like the picture above of the holographic film plate. Our eyes take it in, the nerve impulses travel along the optic nerve to the occipital lobes at the back base of the skull, where a cascade reaction is triggered that finds the nerve impulses traveling to the top and front of the skull to the frontal lobes and an image is formed inside the brain. Along the way, much other material is added to the actual, original nerve impulse and some material is deleted. (See, “Thought and Language Patterns That Limit Us,” introductory section, for a fuller explanation.)

    An 18th Century Frenchman named Jean Fourier developed a type of calculus now known as Fourier transforms. This specialized math is a way of converting any pattern, no matter how complex, into wave forms. And back into interference patterns. Thus, an image is transformed into interference patterns on the holographic film and then transformed back into wave form when it is projected. What does this have to do with the brain?

    Each brain cell in the visual cortex responds to a different pattern, but it does not respond to the pattern itself. Neurophysiologists discovered that it responds to the Fourier translations of the patterns. Our brains are, in a sense, programmed with this specialized calculus. Further research has shown that our other senses are programmed for waveform analysis.

    Could it be that what is out there is a chorus of wave forms that is transformed into the everyday world by the brain only after we sense it? Quantum physicists and mystics have concluded that all we sense is all illusion; that it does not exist in the form we know outside of ourselves.

    We truly do create our own reality.

How a Hologram Is made

   After the film is developed, the hologram is illuminated at the same angle as the "reference" beam during the original exposure to reveal the 3-D image.

    A hologram must be illuminated to produce the image. "Projected" images appear in the space between the film and the viewer. There is no current technology that gives the ability to project an aerial or focused image into open space without interposing some type of screen such as smoke, mist, film or a concave mirror. Images cannot be projected from the film to a distant point. A Hologram can produce a real or virtual image in space, but only when it is viewed through or reflected from the physical film. (Diagram and explanatory text from here.)

    If you are interested in this technology, you can read about it in The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot; this is a fascinating book, if a bit of a difficult read. You can find a synopsis of this book here. There is a more thorough explanation with diagrams here.

(Pictures and captions from www.harmantechnology.com.)