Desperately trying to get my head round this. HELP !

by **slimmouse** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:51 pm

Came across this article today. Trying to put a few pieces together. Anyone got any clues ? Link ; <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/hologram.html">homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/hologram.html</a> TWM The Universe as a Hologram by Michael Talbot Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm? In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations. University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears. The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something. To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the 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. In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web. In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past. What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is." Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development". Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality. Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage. Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram. Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica). Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information. Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly. Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system. The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists. Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability. Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism. Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smellisin part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions. But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion. We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram. This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the-holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature. Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm. In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level. It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B' at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolvedpuzzles in psychology. In particular, Stanislav Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness. In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species's anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal. The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate. Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations. In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations "transpersonal experiences", and in the late '60s he helped found a branch of psychology called "transpersonal psychology" devoted entirely to their study. Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm. As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange. The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain -- as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical. Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body. Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because, in the holographic domain of thought, images are ultimately as real as "reality". Even visions and experiences involving "non-ordinary" reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his book "Gifts of Unknown Things," biologist Lyall Watson describes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then "click" off again and on again several times in succession. Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such events, experiences like this become more tenable if "hard" reality is only a holographic projection. Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not there" because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected. If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson's are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality. What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams. Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry. Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect's findings "indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".

by **Quentin Quire** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:00 pm

Get hold of his book 'The Holographic Universe', it's excellent. To be honest, the stuff you quote pretty much explains the core of the concept but the book eases the reader into a bit more gently with a number of examples. I think it's one of the most exciting theories in a long time and give it a lot of credence. It also seems to give a lot of strength to the occult meme 'As Above So Below' which I find interesting. David Icke also co-opted it into his cosmology in the final chapters of his latest book 'Infinite Love ...', which shouldn't dissuade you from the concept hopefully ...

by **Quentin Quire** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:16 pm

Grant Morrison (the man responsible for my log-in name) wrote a fantastic series of comic books called 'The Invisibles' which deal with the concept. Essentially he posits two ultra-universes, imagined as two overlapping circles - one dark and one light - with the portion which overlaps being our 'subjective' reality, a battle ground between the forces of rigidity, fascism and evil vs. anarchy and light. Essentially the 2 ultra-universes are the crossing lasers which create the holographic subjective universe we inhabit. What's interesting is that with the image of 2 overlapping circles, if you smudge away a certain portion of both circles is you are left with the Vesicle Pisces, the fish symbol utilised by early Christians. This wikipedia entry also links this to Philip K. Dick and supposed link to the DNA chain -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesicle_pisces">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesicle_pisces</a> I also recall reading somewhere that the extrapolation of overlapping circles can be read as the growth and expansion of cellular matter during the big bang and the creation of life ... I don't know if this makes anything clearer!

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:25 pm

"If you look for the social-economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes Holograms aside, this article looks to me like using theoretical science talk to 'debunk paranoid conspiricism' as practiced by followers of the 'Chip Berlet School of Inquiry Deterrence.' Take it as a warning when you are given the message- "How can we really know anything?" or "Time to forget..." This is a deterrent to even trying that is usually trotted out as an obfuscation device, not to merely caution or inform. This article seems to take the concepts 'connectedness' and 'context' and push them over the cliff to meaninglessness on the animal ground where we live and are tortured, poisoned, and robbed. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, <hr></blockquote> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.<hr></blockquote> Tactic: encourage the cynical or confused to congratulate themselves for not believing anything as if that were 'pragmatic.' However, that being said, I repeatedly point at CONTEXT when analyzing a media 'event' such as a headline or movie to see how it fits in the larger picture as an intentionally generated psycho-political event. And that means not just myopically scrutanizing the interior details of the event but ALSO seeing how it fits as a puzzle piece with other events. I did this with the movie 'V for Vendetta.' <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessageRange?topicID=3427.topic&start=61&stop=66">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...61&stop=66</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr> If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.<hr></blockquote> That's certainly true of propaganda for social engineering and psychological warfare. So I wonder if this is an obfuscation article meant to confound. I recently heard NPR do a totally incoherent 'Radio Lab' show that obscured how propaganda works just to suggest teachers can't be trusted in the classroom so this obscuring tactic is something to look out for. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 3/19/06 4:38 pm

by **slimmouse** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:38 pm

Well of course, Icke, like the rest of us has fallen foul of many blind alleys and traps in his own time. "The Jews did it" being but one of them. But of course , Icke by and large has moved on, like I suggest we all do, if indeed our thinking is to progress. I suppose it boils down to really seeing how the game is played by those who lay such traps. Which funnily enough takes us back to the not-so-usual suspects in much of todays current parapolitical thinking. Those extaordinarily elite few, who, If you want my own honest opinion, have know this stuff regarding interconnectedness ever since, and use the ignorance and the greed of their misguided followers to maintain the "Status Quo". Those who quite often without even realising it, reinforce that kind of divide and conquer thinking, usually (thought not always) because 'it pays well' Meanwhile the serious knowledge is closely guarded by those who truly know we are all connected - but by revealing such truths would upset the "Status Quo" as they like to call it. Keep us fighting against one another. "Its good for business" That very tool, which has been so destructive to our civilisation throughout the ages,largely via the religion plan. Interesting to note that the Gnostics were well aware of such facts as found out by relatively unrecorded and largely ignored Science today. But then again of course theres Science, and theres Science. One is unbound by corporate restrictions, and goes where corporate science doesnt want it to go, and thus usually ends up being cast off as "insanity" That which remains ( and is profitable ) finds its way into our education system, courtesy of the self censorship factors which are generated by "established science", which might loosely be termed as a little more than a corporate scam gone large. This is then reinforced by what Mr and Mrs Doe see on their TV, which is of course nothing but the same scam. But Hey - After all, if its not on the TV, its not true right ? <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)">

by **Dreams End** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:52 pm

But don't assume it's a "new" concept. The concept was actually put forward by Einstein waaay back...in the 30's ...but the irony is that it was supposed to, as a thought experiment, disprove quantum mechanics. Didn't work. Bohr 1, Einstein 0. So really, this phenomenon is a result of basic quantum mechanics as understood almost a century ago. I have Talbot's book..and Bohm's. I'll be darned if I'm qualified to judge the merits, but they are fascinating. I will say that we do need to beware of the "(insert new technology here) as paradigm". That is, certain concepts come about because some technological development gives us a new metaphor that helps us grasp some previously hard to visualize concepts. Another example would be using the idea of computers to understand the brain. However, we should be able to recognize that just as the technological metaphor opened up our understanding...it is, in fact, a metaphor and may therefore also be limiting in it's own way. Here's wikipedia on the EPR paradox...the original objection by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen to Quantum Mechanics. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox</a> The irony, of course, is that Einstein absolutely smashed preconceived, a priori concepts of how "reality" works (space is curved? PULL the other one!) only to fall victim to his own ideological, or should I say, paradigmatical limitations to accepting QM. Primarily, it was Einstein's objection to the idea of probalistic mechanisms at work in the universe that bothered him. Hence his famous "God does not play dice with the universe." Maybe one day an even deeper theory will come along to erase the idea of probability as the controlling mechanism at subatomic levels. But right now, I guess God does play dice. Quantum mechanics does, indeed, mess with our everyday sense of how things work, but it's not at all new, as I stated. In fact, I don't think there's been much improvement on the idea since it originally developed back in the 20's. The most interesting aspect, in my view, and one that has been latched onto and oversimplified in New Age thought, is the idea of the apparent involvement of the observer in determining an outcome based purely on the act of OBSERVING that outcome (which, in a sense, is another way of saying what the above experiment found). I think some physicists feel like this is just an artifact created by translating mathematical equations into plain language. Others think it's really a part of quantum theory, but are busy trying to put the theory to practical uses. And a few, such as Fred Wolf, make some side cash writing books for laypeople such as myself which are probably oversimplified but keep me riveted nonetheless. One bizarre way around the need for observation to influence observed outcomes is the "many worlds hypothesis" which suggests that at every quantum event (think subatomic coin flip) when you get heads then the universe splits in two and in the other universe another "you" sees tails. While all this sounds bonkers, there are physicists happily working on applications of this weirdness, such as quantum computers which somehow would utilize these other worlds or simultaneous superposition of states to add calculating power, or quantum cryptography which destroys information merely by having it observed or even teleportation a la Star Trek. The deeper, philosophical implications are, as from what I can tell in my limited experience, not taken seriously by western philosophy...at least in terms of philosophy of mind which was my own interest awhile back. There are folks attempting to explain consciousness in terms of quantum mechanisms...but this may simply be an ill-fated attempt to keep mindstuff and brainmatter stuff separate just as Descartes tried to do centuries ago. For Descartes, the site of communication between nonphysical mind stuff and physical brain stuff, if I remember, was the pineal gland. To Roger Penrose, it is "microtubules" in the brain. Brief intro to this particular area I found when trying to Google Penrose's first name: <a href="http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html">www.quantumconsciousness....ation.html</a> Here's a graphic that sort of gets at the idea...and no, I don't understand everything on that website...but you can get a general idea. <img src="http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation_files/roy5.gif" style="border:0;"/> Think about it like this. In a regular "computer" (this one has three "bits" which can be black or white") there are 8 possible combinations...and you could try each one in succession looking for some solution. Here, however, in the area marked "superposition" we see the "computer" trying all 8 at once in an eight-layered "superposition" in which all 8 possibilities will continue to exist until someone or something causes the system to "collapse" down to one particular "solution." Perhaps there is a way for a nonmaterial "consciousness" to influence this outcome at the preconscious level...i.e. before the "collapse" takes place. I couldn't see how this explanation could explain consciousness, per se, but it would up the brain's computing power significantly and also maybe explain how even single celled organisms seem to "make decisions" and "learn". In current theory of the brain, it's the communication BETWEEN brain cells that leads to information processing...and in a one celled organism...that's not so easy. From what I can gather, Penrose is saying that the processes that cause the superposition states of possible outcomes (one exampe, what should I have for dinner, shrimp, sushi or pasta) is not probalistic (completely up to chance) and not deterministic (absolutely pre-ordained given the physical state of the system at the time of choosing). But it IS, not computational...that is, you can't simply predict based on looking at the state of the system even though it's not simply random. Note to Hugh: You might want to relax JUST a bit on looking for propaganda. As I said, this is OLD news...and though one can argue about the actual meaning of these theories in the macroscopic world, quantum theory has an excellent record as far as it's ability to predict outcomes. However, that doesn't mean holograms are correct...that's not even a mainstream view...but whatever the "REAL" answer is, it's likely not to sync to well with our commonsense understanding of the material world. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dreamsend@rigorousintuition>Dreams End</A> at: 3/19/06 4:57 pm

by **slimmouse** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:45 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>So really, this phenomenon is a result of basic quantum mechanics as understood almost a century ago.<hr></blockquote> A century ago ? Did you not read any Gnostic stuff ? They knew all this thousands of years before 'official religion' was ever invented. The destruction of the library at Alexandria took care of that of course ! <blockquote>Quote:<hr>One bizarre way around the need for observation to influence observed outcomes is the "many worlds hypothesis" which suggests that at every quantum event (think subatomic coin flip) when you get heads then the universe splits in two and in the other universe another "you" sees tails. <hr></blockquote> Every thought results in an outcome. Every thought creates another dimension. The universe expands via thought. This is to my mind "Gods playground". Just my personal opinion of course. No "new age" influence. No religous sphere. No Group thought involved. We are all part of the same, and yet we are all individuals given the physical gift of existance on this plane. It is important to my mind that we embrace both concepts unilaterally, lest we descend into ......er......fascism. But to my mind at least, isnt it time to embrace the idea that we are all somehow connected ? I personally feel so. Might be bad for business, but surely cant be bad for humanity, whether true or false ? From what I have seen of the way 'accepted' modern Science, history, Religion, and any other educational sphere you wish to address approaches it, the emphasis is continually on the I, and not on the We ( irony ) - which in itself is bad for humanity at large, and good for the .....hehe. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>However, that doesn't mean holograms are correct...<hr></blockquote> I have to say I strongly disagree at this point. An atom is but a solar system of planets revolving around a nucleus ( Sun ). The gaps between the solid part ( The nucleus )and the planets - electrons, protons, etc is reasonably indicative of the big picture - depending upon which solar system the particular atom mimics. The bigger picture being of course ,that everything from the sub atomic particle, to the solar system, is little more than energy vibrating at different frequencies . Its all energy, therefore its all a hologram. I am told that we do have one solid atom within each of us. But thats what Ive been told. Could be crap of course.

by **streeb** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:01 pm

"Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smellisin part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions..." I've been fascinated by this for a long time: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia</a>

by **Dreams End** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:57 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>An atom is but a solar system of planets revolving around a nucleus ( Sun ). The gaps between the solid part ( The nucleus )and the planets - electrons, protons, etc is reasonably indicative of the big picture - depending upon which solar system the particular atom mimics.<hr></blockquote> Slimmouse, that has not been the accepted model of the atom for almost a century now. It still shows up in textbooks, only because it makes certain concepts easier to understand. I'd better slow down a little. here's a more recent image of the conception of an atom: <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/HAtomOrbitals.png" style="border:0;"/> Here's the explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom Described by various quantum numbers. The "solar system" model died a long time ago. All the quantum weirdness comes from the new description of the atom via these quantum numbers (shroedinger equations). In fact, it is not even possible to know exactly where an electron is, unless you have zero information about how fast it's moving. The "orbitals" as now conceived are really mathematical models, functions that show the probability of finding an electron in a particular place. There are several...the "s" orbitals are conceived of as basically round, but after that, they are sort of dumbell shaped and look nothing like solar system orbits. And then, when atoms combine into molecules, they get weirder "looking" still. I put "looking" in quotes, because, as I said, these are mathemathical models...we can't really "see" atoms at the level of electrons. You can see pictures of individual atoms thought...notice the fuzziness. This is a litle misleading, though, because this image is not a result of bouncing light off of the thing and taking a picture, but it gives an idea. The "ripples" are electron density waves. <img src="http://emusician.com/mag/504Tech-PageFig.-1.gif" style="border:0;"/>

by **slimmouse** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:06 pm

Thanks for youre pics DE. All seem to conform to some basic mathematical principles of conformity, wouldnt you say ? Who designed all that , in your best opinion ? An accident of Geometry perhaps ? In other words, who is the real smart guy here. Who is the guy who created such phenomena ? Us ? Or the "guy" who created us ?

by **Dreams End** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:21 pm

Well, that's a different question. And sometimes you read physicists and it really does seem like you are reading some sort of mystic. But it's important not to fall into the "god of the gaps" theorizing. If God is anything like one would expect a creator of the universe to be, one would also expect that our little minds wouldn't really be able to understand this being in anything like totality...so lack of rational "proof" of God wouldn't really be expected. However, that said, one can't simply say, "We don't know how this works, so God must have done it." It's been done before and then scientists come along and spoil it by figuring out how it works on purely naturalistic principles. For example, the "harmony of the spheres" was often cited in this way...how the planets traveled around the earth in perfect little circles. That didn't work out so well when observations were done more carefully, so then we got "epicycles"...little loop-dee-loops meant to explain the perceived orbits without changing the earth-centric theory. Well, all that's old news. I think one of the biggest problems in science education today is the attempt to make it look like it's all been pretty much figured out...no sense of mystery to inspire the next generation of Hawkings and Einsteins. So we share that, at least, slimmouse. We sit back and look around us with awe and wonder.

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:17 pm

Actually I was cautioning against allowing wholistic views to be morphed into blanket agnoticism - "we just don't have the bandwith." The obvious danger here has been exploited by Big Tobacco and Global Warming obfuscators. I read an essay by a research scientist in Harpers Magazine about a year ago in which he cautioned against the White House's tactic of using the scientific method against people by preventing ANY conclusions, the legalistic demand for irrefutable proof. He wrote that all those years of skeptical deconstruction might need to be now transformed into socially-riskier well-informed assertions lest our doubts be used against us. The scientist thus realizes how 'objective research' inevitably has a moral aspect because people are affected by it. This excerpt posted on the front page about 'Vendetta' points at the need to use wholistic perceptions to take a stand on a view rather than slide into "awe and wonder" which has much the same effect as "shock and awe." <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/int/2004/07/22/moore/index_np.html">www.salon.com/books/int/2...ex_np.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>...people's heads are stuffed with a fantastic amount of information, and I think all too often they cannot assimilate, digest or connect up that incredible amount of data into a coherent worldview. And I like to think that if my work is complex, it's because we live in a complex world. What I'm trying to do is give a bit of coherence to that complexity, to say that it is possible to think about politics, history, mythology, architecture, murder and the rest of it all at the same time to see how it connects. With reference to my interest over the last 10 years in magic, one of the most useful formulas in alchemy, specifically, is "solve et coagula," where "solve" is the act of dissolving something, where we take something apart and study how it works -- what in our modern terms would be called analysis. In a scientific framework, it would be called reductionism. The other part of the formula is "coagula," which is synthesis rather than analysis, holism rather than reductionism, the act of putting something back together in a hopefully improved form. Once you take the watch to pieces and see what was making it run slow, you put it back together and hopefully it works better. I'd say that we've had an awful lot of "solve" in our culture, but far too little "coagula." There are people who seem daunted by the complexity of our culture to the point that they'll shy away from it rather than try to put those thousands of jigsaw pieces together into some sort of useful, coherent picture. Which is not to say that everybody is like that. You mentioned Thomas Pynchon earlier, and he would be one of my primary inspirations for that worldview. Reading "Gravity's Rainbow" first alerted me to the fact that yes, you could work with this sort of complexity and richness. Pynchon was an authentic 20th century voice adequate to his time; the same with writers like James Joyce and Iain Sinclair. Information is the 21st century's primary currency, it seems. Information is funny stuff. In some of the science magazines I read, I've found it described as an actual substance that underlies the entirety of existence, as something that is more fundamental than the four fundamental physical forces: gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. I think they've referred to it as a super-weird substance. Now, obviously, information shapes and determines our lives and the way we live them, yet it is completely invisible and undetectable. It has no actual form; you can only see its effects. Information is a kind of heat. I would suggest that as our society accumulates information, from its hunter-gatherer origins to the complexities of our present day, it raises the cultural temperature.<hr></blockquote>

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:38 pm

Also from the front page comments on 'Vendetta'-- <blockquote>Quote:<hr>So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlocks">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlocks</a><hr></blockquote>

by **wordspeak** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:17 pm

"Tactic: encourage the cynical or confused to congratulate themselves for not believing anything as if that were 'pragmatic.' " ...I agree with HM fully on what's truly most relevant here, and that line above put so well what I'm running into on a daily basis. More and more I think that one prime playing field for revolutionaries needs to be on a really baseline "philosophical" level: Politics can't be avoided or dismissed or the term used synonymously with "bullshit"; politics is actually what creates our concrete life realities. Believing that "the universe is a phantasm," or "no positive change has ever been made," or "there is no objective reality," or any of the other word combinations that add up to the same meaninglessness... is obfuscatory and, most of all, just pathetic. How to finesse it, or poetize it, may be a harder struggle. Anyway, I remember good friends being very influenced by Michael Talbot about five years ago, and I have to say I consider them non-revolutionary people, though very intelligent, today.

by **Dreams End** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:08 pm

I'm not sure that ANY theory in physics should inform our politics. These "no meaning" interpretations are a result of bad translations from "mathese" into spoken/written language... I'm just suggesting that I don't feel I need to curtail my own interest in nonlocality or whatever because it doesn't fit politically. Real science...admittedly rare...just goes where the facts take it. People used to interpret Einstein's theory of relativity in political and philosophical terms..."Hey, dude, it's ALL relative". Well, if by all you mean acceleration of different systems within varying frames of reference...then sure...if you mean by "all" the way we should organize our lives or arrange our government...that's silliness. So, again, let's not throw the quantum baby out with the New Age bathwater. In fact, the very machine we are all typing this on is affected by things like "quantum tunneling" (the annoying habit of elecrons to go from a to b without traversing the intervening spaces.) This will have to be dealt with as the components get smaller and smaller...at scales that are getting into the region in which quantum effects are significant. So, toss out New Age "spin" (ha) on this stuff...but don't reject science because it doesn't fit your politics...THAT is what is truly dangerous.

Desperately trying to get my head round this. HELP !

Desperately trying to get my head round this. HELP !

Holographic Universe

Holographic Universe ...

Re: Desperately trying to get my head round this. HELP !

Well of course, Icke.....

Re: Holographic Universe

Thanks DE.

Re: Thanks DE.

Re: Thanks DE.

Youre pics.

Re: Youre pics.

Re: Note to Hugh-"relax a bit on finding propaganda&quo

Re: Note to Hugh-"relax a bit on finding propaganda&quo

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