The Universe
as a hologram
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 unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, 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.-->
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