The Holographic Model of Reality
The Seven Premises
about the
Nature of Reality
[Extracts from the book Light Emerging by Barbara Brennan]
The Origins of Holism and Holography
In 1929 Alfred North Whitehead, a well-known mathematician and philosopher, described nature as a great expanding series of occurrences that are interconnected. «These occurrences», he said, «do not terminate in sense perception. Dualisms like mind/matter are false. Reality is inclusive and interlocking». What Whitehead meant by that is everything is relational, including our senses. We use our senses to get information about any given situation. Our senses affect the situation we perceive. The situation affects the senses with which we perceive it. In the same year, Karl Lashley published the results of his research on the human brain that showed that specific memory is not located in any one place in the brain. He found that destroying a portion of the brain does not destroy memory located there. Memory could not located in specific brain cells. Rather, memory seems to be distributed all over the brain, probably as a field of energy.
In 1947, Dennis Gabor derived equations that described a possible three-dimensional photography that he called holography. The first hologram was constructed with the use of a laser in 1965 by Emmette Leith and Juris Upatinicks. In 1969, Dr. Karl Pribram, a renowned brain physiologist at Stranford University, proposed that the hologram worked very well as a powerful model for brain processes. In 1971, Dr. David Bohm, a well- known physicist who worked with Einstein, proposed that the organisation of the universe is probably holographic. When Pribram heard of Bohm’s work, he was elated. It supported his idea that the human brain functions as hologram, collecting and reading information from a holographic universe.
What is a Hologram?
So, what are these men and their research saying? To understand their ideas, let’s examine how a hologram works. No doubt, you have seen a hologram. It projects a three- dimensional image from seemingly no-where into space. As you walk around this image, you see the different sides of it.
It takes a two-step process to create the three-dimensional hologram image. The Figure shows the first step. The beam from a laser is split in half by a device called a beam splitter. One half is focused through a lens onto an object such as a cube, then is reflected by a mirror onto a photographic plate. A specific phase relationship is set between the two halves of the laser beam. A photograph is taken. The result is a photograph of an interference pattern that the two beams produce when they come back together on the photographic plate. This interference pattern looks like indiscernible squiggly lines.
The second step, is simply to remove the cube, the beam splitter, the second mirror, and the second lens. If you now take the laser and focus it through a lens and onto the photographic plate, you will find a three-dimensional image of the cube suspended in space! What is more surprising is that if you simply cut the photographic plate in half without changing anything else, you still get the image of the cube suspended in space, although it is a little hazier. If you cut another portion of the plate off, you will still get the whole image of the cube in space. This continues with smaller and smaller pieces of the photographic plate. You still get the whole cube, but it becomes a bit hazier each time.
As we enter the holographic era, we prepare for many changes. This era rests on the foundation of seven basic premises about the nature of reality that fall directly out of the holographic work and upon which the holographic model is based.
Premise 1: Consciousness is the Basic Reality
To arrive at the premise that consciousness is the basic reality, let’s follow Dr. Pribram’s analysis. Dr. Pribram says that basic reality is the energetic signature that the brain picks up through our senses. Our brain then interprets the signature into the shape and color of a cube. What he means is that true reality is like the energy in the laser beams that carries information. What we see as reality is more like the projected three- dimensional picture of the cube in the hologram. The true reality is to be found in the energy that our senses pick up rather than in the objects we define as real.
Pribram states that our brain acts like the hologram that projects the true reality of the energy beams into an illusory cube. Our brain, using our five senses, picks up the energy field of whatever we bring our attention to in the moment and translates that energy field into an object. What this means is that the object we perceive represents the secondary reality. It is but a signature of the deeper reality (the energy beams) from which the projection of the object comes.
Pribram says that all our senses act together in a way to create the illusion of our world around us, much as a set of stereo speakers gives you the impression that the sound comes from the center of your head. So far, only the hologram using the visible sense – light from the laser beam – has been built. Probably someday, holograms using the kinesthetic, auditory, olfactory and gustatory senses will also be built.
Clearly, Dr. Pribram’s research relates to our model of the human energy field. On the level of the human aura, the basic reality is energy. However, if we go deeper, we find our intention, which results from our consciousness, upon which our energy flow is based. And even deeper than that, we find our essence and the core star level, the foundation of all reality.
Premise 2: Everything is connected to Everything Else
This connection is not dependent on spatial proximity or on time. An event in one location immediately, without time delay for communication (that is faster than the speed of light and beyond Einstein’s relativity theory) affects everything else.
Since there is no time delay, what we call cause and effect occur at the same time. Therefore, our idea of cause and effect, which is so useful in our material world, is not applicable or valid in the primary reality.
Premise 3: Each Piece Contains the Whole
If we use the model of the hologram, we get a view of the nature of reality very different from the way our western culture has described it in the past. Since the whole three- dimensional image of the cube is still produced no matter how small a piece of the photographic plate is left, the hologram clearly demonstrates that each piece (of the holographic plate) contains the whole cube.
Premise 4: Time is also Holographic
Each aspect exists everywhere all the time and always (that is, both at all times and in all times). Each moment is whole, complete, and alive and coexists in a knowledgeable relationship with all other moments. Each moment is self-knowledgeable and self- intelligent and has access to all moments.
Premise 5: Individuation and Energy are Basic to the Universe
Each aspect is individual and not identical to any other aspect.
There is an experiment that proves that light is a particle and is also a wave of energy. However, another experiment shows that particles do not act like things. Rather, they are more like «individual events of interactions», which are also basically energy. Therefore: Every aspect of the universe is either a wave of energy or an individual particle of energy.
Premise 6: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts
If we reverse the process and connect the pieces of the photographic plate back together one by one, we get an increasingly clearer, more defined picture of the whole cube. Some of the major points that fall out of the sixth premise are:
1. Each aspect exists within a system greater than itself, which also exists within a system greater than itself, and so on.
2. Each aspect and system has knowledge of all other systems.
3. By connecting and integrating the smaller parts to the whole, we get a better, clearer understanding of the whole.
Premise 7: Consciousness Creates Reality and its own Experience of Reality
The seventh premise is based on Karl Pribram’s model of the holographic brain. Pribram states that the brain process data consistent with what it is used to. That means you will experience according to your expectations based on your beliefs and your heritage.
Since reality is created by consciousness, it also creates its own experience of reality, since that is part of reality.
Creating a Healing Relationship with the Earth
There is a holographic relationship between your personal healing and the healing of the earth. Many of us are concerned about the great deal of pain on the earth today. We want to know how we specifically have helped to create it and how we personally can help to heal it. As I said earlier everything that has been said about individual relationships can be applied to our relationship to the earth. Collectively, our negative contracts show in our treatment of our planet. On the personal level, any negative contracts that you have found operating in your personal relationships are also functioning holographically in your relationships to the earth.
Many people of our present culture like to forget our dependence upon the earth and our interconnections to all the beings that live upon it. We act as if we own it; indeed, we even believe we do own pieces of it. I thought Crocodile Dundee put it straight when he said in the movie, “It’s rather like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they live on”. Much of our mistreatment of the earth comes from our personal pain, which our negative beliefs keep re- creating. Collectively, we hold ourselves in this pain, and collectively, we mistreat the earth.
Since we have learned from holographic theory that everything we do affects everything there is, then we must somehow, in perhaps some small way, be responsible for what is happening on the earth today. After all, the smaller system within the greater system is directly connected to and immediately affects that greater system. Such a thought is overwhelming to most of us. We have quite a lot to deal with in our own lives without taking on planetary problems. Many people turn away from the immensity of the problems humanity as a whole faces now.
Summary of a Holistic Health-care Vision
The basic reality in the universe is essence. It includes our personal individual essence and the essence of everything else combined, which is called universal essence. All creation comes out of that essence: our consciousness, mind, feelings, and matter, including our physical body. Our health is a result of bringing our true unique essence through our consciousness, mind, feelings and physical body. Our health or disease is created by us through this process. It is us.
Disease is the result of a distortion in our consciousness (our intent) that blocks the expression of our essence coming through all the levels into the physical. Disease is an expression of how we have tried to separate ourselves from our deeper being, our essence.
What we create arises holographically from both our individuality and ourselves collectively at the level of the groups to which we belong, from the most intimate to the universal scale. That is, our creations are not only our own doing but are strongly affected by and also arise (holographically) out of the people to whom we are most connected. Our creations are less affected by the people to whom we are less connected.
In this process of health or disease, we cannot divide our interior self or separate ourselves from each other. We are all connected. Everything we think, feel and do about health and dis-ease effects everyone else. By healing ourselves, we heal others. By expressing our essence, our uniqueness, we bring health to everyone by allowing them to express their essence.
Each part of us contains the whole pattern; every cell of our body contains the pattern of our whole body, and we also contain the pattern of humanity. We can tap into this great health pattern of power and light for healing. This pattern is real and alive.
What can I personally do for world peace?
This is a wonderful question, and I hope that more people will ask it of themselves. It is becoming more and more important that larger numbers of people begin taking responsibility for becoming world citizens. The first step toward that end is to consider yourself from the greater vantage point, and let your decisions and actions arise out of that broader knowing.
Now you might say, “I didn’t do it”. You might even blame others – “It was the politicians” – or you might choose some other nation or ethnic group to blame. But it is you who have participated in an election or refrained from voting. It is you who have carried prejudices within yourself regarding others who seem different from yourself. You do it with complete strangers as well as with people you know. This generalizations and assumptions that you make about others, you also automatically and often unconsciously place on yourself. This causes you a great deal of inner personal pain. When you hear yourself speaking negatively about another, ask yourself what effect it has on you when you say it about yourself.
The longings of the human soul do not limit themselves to national boundaries, languages, or creeds. But with these distinctions, the soul finds an appropriate classroom (or playground) in which to learn. It is precisely this variety that makes the earth such a wonderful choice for incarnation. Nations were created to bring diversity and excitement to your lives. They were never meant to be a battleground. Indeed, one could live many lives upon the earth in many environments and never get bored.
So, the first place to create world peace is at home. Create harmony at home, in the office, and in the community, and then extend it across national boundaries. Would you let your child go hungry? Then why let the next-door neighbor’s, the African, or the Indian go hungry? Wherever you draw the line is where you have limited yourself: your self-definition, your love and your power.
The basic idea is that you each devote ten percent of your time and energy to a private project for the purpose of bringing about world peace. This may be in the area of education, political activity, communication, or simply monetary contribution to a cause with which you are profoundly connected. Do this only from the perspective that you have helped create the situation as it is and therefore intend to heal it as the healer that you are and from the power available to you as co-creator. Thus, rather than working for world peace because you should, you will work because you want to. Rather than working out of fear or guilt, you will work from the point of view of a creator putting his or her work in order. Never, never approach world peace from the point of view that you are nearly powerless to do anything about it. That simply is not and never will be true. You are the co-creator of all you experience, including the world situation. If you do not like what you have created, find the lessons to be learned from your imperfect creations and recreate in another, more suitable way.
If you fear poverty, then your actions arising out of that fear – trying to stop personal poverty – will help create poverty on a world scale. Your fear helps maintain the mass belief in poverty. This mass belief in poverty causes a backlash reaction in which everyone strives to get more and to keep it for themselves. This greed leads to the struggle for economic gain that has, in turn, brought about the impoverishment of the world’s resources. This creates more poverty and holds it in place in the physical world.
Greed is based on the fear of not having enough. What appears to be greed is really a result of fear of poverty. That, in turn, creates poverty, which in turn leads to the
destruction of the earth’s resources and challenges your very existence. Ultimately, therefore, your fear of poverty covers your existential fear, and ultimately, your greed rest upon the shaky foundation of your deeper existential fear.
Now, what can be said of this greed? Greed is a term you may never wish to apply to yourself. Let us soften it a little: If you look within, you find many “wants”. Make a list of your “wants”. You will find that many of them are designed to make you feel safe, which they can never do. Now ask yourself, “Which of these wants do I wish to create from my higher consciousness, based on my positive belief system? Which do I want to create to make myself feel safe, based on my negative belief system?” Divide the list in this way. Now focus on the positive list and ask yourself, “How does each of my wants serve the world as well as my personal self?” When that is completed, address each item designed to assuage fear and ask, “What fear am I trying to assuage, and how? If I act according to these wants, how will my actions affect the world?” As you know from the previous material, basically you are acting out of and thereby affirming fear in the world by following through with such action. Note that as you do this, you may find that some of the items are on the wrong list.