HOLOGRAPHIC THEORY + THE HOLOFLUX

I’ve been ‘thinking’ a lot about how we think thought and memory and perception work and I remembered reading this in Wheels of Life by the genius Anodea Judith almost 20 years ago. I’ll just leave it here in case you want to trip out a bit - it’s all very quantum…

“How do light and visual process connect to what we experience in perception? Why do so many mystics claim to see patterns of light when they meditate, eyes closed? Why do dream images seem so real? And what constitutes memory?

The most plausible theory put forth to answer these questions comes from a neuroscientist named Karl Pribram, and is based on a model of the mind as a hologram. A hologram is a three-dimensional image formed by two intersecting laser beams…

In the creation of a hologram, a beam of light produced by a laser is reflected from an object, and recorded onto a light-sensitive plate. The plate also receives another beam of the same frequency, called the reference beam, which goes directly from the source to the plate. Looking at the plate itself, we would see only a meaningless pattern of dark and light swirls. This is the coded information of the intersection of the two beams, much as the grooves on a record are the coded representations of a sound track.

When the plate is later ‘reenacted’ by a reference beam that contains the same frequency as the original laser, the image of the holographed object eerily jumps out at you in three dimensions. You can move to the side of the hologram and see the side of the object as if it were really there, yet since it is only light you can pass your hand right through it.

There are many remarkable things about holograms. The first is that the information is stored omnipresently on the plate. In other words, if the plate were to break into pieces, any piece of the plate would be capable of reproducing the whole picture, though with increasingly less detail as the pieces diminish in size. The second remarkable things about holograms is that they are nonspatial. Many holograms can be superimposed upon one another in one ‘space’, or on one plate by using laser’s of different frequencies. Karl Pribrams’s theory states that the brain itself functions like a hologram through constant interpretation of interference patterns between brain waves…

When we view an object, light is transformed into neural frequency patterns in the brain. The brain is filled with some thirteen billion neurons. The number of possible connections between these neurons numbers in the trillions. Where scientists have previously looked at the neurons themself as significant to brain activity, they are now looking at the junctions between the neurons. While the actual cells exhibit a kind of on-off reflex action, the junctions at the nerve endings exhibit wavelike qualities when viewed as a whole. In Pribram’s own words: ‘If you look at a whole series of these (nerve endings) together, they constitute a wavefront. One comes this way, another that way, and they interact. And all of a sudden you’ve got your interference pattern.’

As impulses travel through the brain, the wavelike qualities create what we experience as perception and memory. These perceptions are stored as encoded wavefront frequencies in the brain and can be activated by an appropriate stimulus, triggering the original wave forms…

Our perception of the world around us seems to be a reconstruction of a neural hologram within the brain. This applies to language, thought, and all the senses as well as to the perception of visual information. In the words of Pribram, ‘Mind isn’t located in a place. What we have is a holograph-like machinery that turns out images, which we perceive as existing somewhere outside the machinery.’

Because this model hints at each of our brains containing access to all information, even that of other time dimensions, it can explain many things beyond the normal functions of memory and perception such as remote viewing, clairvoyance, mystic visions, and precognition.

Contemporary to Pribram’s holographic brain theory, theoretical physicist David Bohm has described a model which suggests that the universe itself may be a kind of hologram. His term for this is holoflux, as hologram is static and not fitting for a universe so filled with movement and change.

According to Bohm, the universe is ‘enfolded’ or spread as a whole throughout a kind of cosmic medium, much as we would enfold egg whites into a cake batter. This enfoldment allows for an infinite number of interference capabilities, giving us the forms and energies that we experience with our holographic minds. In this context, then, the brain itself is part of a larger hologram, and would therefore contain information about the whole. Just as we perceive the world in a holographic fashion, so may the world itself be a larger hologram in which we are just pieces. But as pieces, we each reflect the whole.

If this is true - if there is an inner and outer world, both of which mirror the entire creation in any of its parts - then we, as parts, contain the information of the whole, as does everything around us. Not only does a grain of sand describe the universe in which it occurs, but each of our minds also contains the encoded information of a greater intelligence, just waiting for the right reference beam to trigger the image…

If both inner and outer worlds appear to function holographically, then the question must be asked: Is there any difference between them?’ Are we, ourselves, also holograms? As we slowly dissolve our self-created ego boundaries and embrace more universal states of being, are we merging our consciousness with a greater hologram? If each piece of the hologram contains information about the whole, though less clearly, is that why we gain clarity each time a new piece of information fits into the puzzle? As we grow and expand our understanding, do we not see things more and more as one interpenetrating web of energies? One picture?

At this time these questions have no definitive answers. Few could argue that what is considered ‘external’ does influence our perceptions, thoughts, and memories, becoming ‘internal’. Few could argue that there is a structure inside us which encompasses energies above and beyond the external world. Doesn’t this internal structure, in turn, influence the external world? Can the construction of our mental holograms be projected outward to take the form on the material planes? Karl Pribram seems to think so, and in a most down-to-earth fashion.

‘Not only do we construct our perceptions of the world, but we also go out and construct these perceptions IN the world. We make tables and bicycles and musical instruments because we can think of them.’

It is this principle that best illustrates the abilities of the ajna chakra - to perceive and command - and the psychic reception and projection of imagery with the outside world.”

- Anodea Judith, pp 293-296 Wheels of Life