13

The Holographic Principle

Most readers will know that a hologram is a three-dimensional image sculpted from a concentrated beam of light. The thing that makes this possible is the wave-mechanics phenomenon known as interference. We came across this in chapter 4, where we discussed the Thomas Young experiment, in which waves of light passing through twin slits in a partition overlapped and reinforced one another, producing an interference pattern on a dark backdrop.

In the same way, a laser, which is a very pure form of light, can be used to create extremely well-defined interference patterns. The hologram is produced by splitting a single, concentrated beam of light into two. One beam is then reflected off the object being photographed and the second beam is directed at an angle toward the reflected light of the first. The interference pattern created by the two beams is then recorded on film. The image on the film actually bears no resemblance to the hologram it projects, however. Only when another beam of light is shone through it does the hologram appear.

Impressive as these images can be, the most interesting aspect of holography concerns the film itself, which possesses rather unusual properties. Let’s say we have a piece of holographic film on which a certain image has been recorded. It can be any image you like. If you were to cut this piece of film in half and shine a laser light through any one of the two pieces, you would find that each separate piece would still contain the whole image. Even if you cut each half into quarters, eighths, and so on, each diminishing piece, when illuminated by laser, will still project a complete image of the object in focus, albeit becoming progressively less distinct as the pieces get smaller. So every small segment of a piece of holographic film contains all the information contained in the uncut whole. This is the holographic principle.

In Bohm’s view, the physical world we see all around us is just like a holographic image, basically an illusion, a kind of external tapestry of subjective impressions composed of waves and interference patterns. Beneath these tangible physical forms, he suggested, lies a deeper, “implicate” order of reality, in which everything exists in what he called its “enfolded” form. Therefore what we see as physical phenomena are simply the explicate or unfolded projections from this deeper, implicate, enfolded order.

In fact, this view of two fundamental orders of existence—i.e., of the “image” and the “film,” or the explicate and the implicate—has exact parallels in numerous esoteric traditions. For example, Buddhists call the material world the sphere of the nonvoid. This is the normal world of sense-objects, the explicate, unfolded dimension—the dimension in which the “holographic” image manifests. The real world, existing beyond the nonvoid, is the void, the dimension in which the “film” itself exists, the implicate, enfolded realm, the progenitor of every thing, every “image” in the visible universe.

Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe, which provides a general summary of Bohm’s ideas, quotes the Tibetan scholar John Blofeld speaking on the nature of the two domains. Blofeld’s worldview, as we see, is strikingly similar to Gurdjieff’s: “In a universe thus composed, everything interpenetrates, and is interpenetrated by, everything else; as with the void, so with the nonvoid—the part is the whole.”¹

A similar Hindu version of cosmic events mentioned previously describes the motion of the universe as cyclical—an endlessly unfolding and enfolding process, with each cycle lasting “a day and a night of Brahma.” It is perhaps worth noting here that the Hindu creation myth says that twenty-four “Brahman hours” are equivalent to 4,320,000,000 of our years, while four, three, and two, followed by seven zeros is a perfect description of the evolutionary development of the Pythagorean Tetrad, which Pythagoras himself, remember, referred to as “the model of the gods.”

So the visible universe is created by Brahma. Brahma is one of the three major gods of the Hindu “trimurti,” which itself, like all religious “trinities,” is primarily an expression of the first law of nature, the law of three forces. Brahma therefore represents the first, active force in the process of triple creation, a force that originates in the implicate realm. From Brahma, everything enfolded subsequently unfolds, like a holographic image, into the explicate dimension. At the end of the “day” the world is “destroyed,” or absorbed, by the god Shiva, the passive or negative force, which, in Bohm’s terms, means that the unfolded again enfolds, from the explicate back into the implicate dimension, after which it completely disappears into the body of the third god, Vishnu, the omnipresent neutral force, the great cosmic mediator. Vishnu then sleeps for a “night” in the sphere of “non-existence,” which Hindus describe as the dimension of endless time, and then gives birth to Brahma again. A new “day” unfolds, and the process endlessly repeats itself. Vishnu’s role in this cosmic episode thus implies that there is an even deeper level of reality beyond the implicate realm, what Bohm himself referred to as a kind of “ultra-implicate” reality.

We have, of course, already visited this rather special place; it is number 6 in the hierarchy of dimensions, the dimension existing beyond the fifth, the plane of light—what I have referred to as the “solid” form of the ultimate reality, the sphere of true “nonlocality.” In Gurdjieff’s “ray of creation,” this would be world order 3 in the descending scale.

Like the Hindu description of the universal process, Bohm’s takes into account the fact that things are never static. He saw the whole phenomenon as in motion, hence his use of the term holomovement, which was meant to include not only the evolving universe but also, crucially, the consciousness of the observer. So when we see things through Bohm’s eyes, we are not merely looking at the ever-changing hologram, we are an integral part of it.

Let us now consider the holographic principle itself, the fact that every small segment of a holographic film contains all the information in the uncut whole. Bohm’s hypothesis implies that we as individuals, each an intrinsic part of the entire holomovement, must also, just like a segment of a holographic film, contain within us a complete “picture” of the greater reality.

This, of course, is precisely the reality Gurdjieff described decades before in his discourses on inner octaves. He said that if one understands the laws governing the creation of inner octaves, it is possible, from observations made in just one scale, to obtain the measurements of any other scale, because they are all in a definite relationship to one another. Therefore there is no need to study the sun, for example, in order to discover the nature of the “matter” of the solar world, because this same order of materiality exists in ourselves. In the same way we have in us the “matter” of all scales, for man is in the full sense of the term, a “miniature universe”; in him are all the matters of which the universe consists; the same forces, the same laws that govern the life of the universe, operate in him; therefore in studying man we can study the whole world, just as in studying the world we can study man.²

Moses expressed the same idea more succinctly: “for in the image of God made he man.”³ And again, the holographic principle—the whole existing in every part—can also be understood in terms of the basic rules of ordinary musical theory. Each tone, semitone, quarter tone, and the like of a major scale contains within it all the information necessary to recreate the entire scale. That is, to determine the frequencies of all the sounds comprising a harmonic scale or octave, it is sufficient to fix the frequency of just one of them.

So the holographic principle, like so many other scientific discoveries discussed in this book, is not an entirely new concept. It is simply a variation on one aspect of a very old theme, the essence of which is encoded in the Hermetic Code and in the number 64. Sixty-four is the key to the inner octave, the mechanism through or by which, said Gurdjieff, all scales of existence are connected and proportionately interrelated.

The holographic model of the universe raises intriguing questions in the spheres of psychology and parapsychology.

First, we now have neurophysiological evidence to suggest that the brain itself may have holographic properties, in the sense that such functions as vision and memory are distributed evenly throughout its structure. If true, this would be significant in serving to reinforce Bohm’s idea that we are all part of an immense hologram in motion, a holomovement, and also Gurdjieff’s assertion that we are exact replicas of the greater whole. Obviously, if the greater whole is by nature holographic, a holographic brain would be precisely what, in Gurdjieff’s worldview, is required.

The holographic model also has possible parapsychological implications. For example, in an attempt to explain how psychokinesis might work—an uncharacteristically bold move for a mainstream scientist— Bohm cited the “ultra-implicate” dimension as the most likely source of such forces. This would be dimension six in the ascending hierarchy. The implicate dimension of Bohm’s vision of reality would therefore correspond to the fifth, the nonlocal plane of light, with the explicate sphere—dimension four—corresponding with the line of time, expressed hermetically in Hindu myth as a period of 4,320,000,000 years.

So, like Gurdjieff, the Greeks, and the Egyptians, Bohm believed that the human mind could in fact access this higher dimension—the ultra-implicate, six-dimensional abode of Vishnu—and through it directly influence the physical world.

We are now back to the idea discussed in chapter 3, in which we considered the possibility that the ancient builders of the first civilizations might have moved their giant blocks of stone using some kind of psychic assistance.

Mind over matter? Admittedly the proposition sounds fantastic, but then so did the prospect of men on the moon little over a decade before it became a reality. Indications are that the next stop could be Mars or possibly one of the moons of Jupiter—a much greater feat than a hop to the moon, but few people today doubt that this kind of enterprise is within our capabilities. Of course the developmental leap from my mind or yours to one capable of defying the known laws of physics would be massive indeed. And yet the myths, the yogi masters, Gurdjieff, and latterly David Bohm all speak of such powers being accessible to the human being. Gurdjieff and Schwaller de Lubicz, as we noted, both believed that such powers were common currency in the ancient world and that somewhere along the trail of time our ancestors somehow lost the understanding of how to use these powers. Whether such a “Golden Age” actually existed or not, in light of the archaeological evidence we have discussed, where blocks of stone weighing from two hundred to twelve hundred tons have been carved, transported for miles, and then perfectly placed and oriented to form massive symbolic structures, I personally believe that ruling out some kind of hitherto unrecognized psychic or psychological factor in the lives and works of these ancient peoples would be injudicious.

As we have seen, the idea of mind—or “music”—over matter is as old as civilization itself, having originated with the men-gods of mythology. We noted Graham Hancock’s observation of certain Native American myths that tell us that music—whistling, the playing of trumpets—caused heavy blocks of stone to float through the air like feathers in a breeze. Exactly the same kind of stories appeared in ancient Greece, recounting the exploits of such as Orpheus, son of the god Apollo and the muse Calliope, whose playing of the lyre “enchanted the trees and rocks and tamed wild beasts.”⁴

Another hero was the “builder god” Amphion, son of Zeus and King of Thebes, also a musician, who single-handedly built the walls of his great city. So clearly, as Gurdjieff always maintained, music of some sort is the key to the techniques used by these people. He further stated that such music involved the use of inner octaves, an all-pervading symmetry of composition that, he said, permeates everything, both man and the universe. Possibly there was real music involved in the procedure, or at least sound vibrations, as in case of the Tibetan demonstration described in chapter 3, which allegedly involved the use of numerous drums and trumpets. But in addition there may have been some form of psychological accompaniment, and it is here, one suspects, that Gurdjieff’s inner octaves would come into play. Inner octaves or “higher vibrations,” according to Gurdjieff’s view, can be accessed only by a fully conscious mind; they correspond to an extremely high degree of “psychological resonance,” a unique condition of existence, apparently attainable by ancient man, now surviving only as a potential faculty in the form of a lingering memory enshrouded in myth.

Scientists in general have a natural tendency to react negatively when they hear talk of “vibrations,” particularly when what is being alluded to is an immeasurable commodity. And yet, consciousness itself, whatever else it may be, can reasonably be considered as a form of resonance. We can’t measure these invisible forms of resonance directly, but we are, nevertheless, acutely aware of their puzzling existence in a world as yet barely half understood. Certain aspects of the rational side of consciousness, such as IQ, intellectual argument, ideas, theories, and so on, can be roughly appraised, but the nature of other aspects of the mind, such as its power to intuit, remain tantalizingly beyond our understanding. So, if what we might call rational consciousness can be conceived of as a form of energy manifesting in varying “degrees of resonance,” then a faculty such as intuition, which clearly transcends all logical thought processes, must function with even finer “vibrations,” that is with higher degrees of psychological or psychic resonance.

The same might be said of memory, a faculty that enables us to pick out a familiar face in a crowd even though thirty years might have ravaged it since last we saw it. It is invariably a very different face, and yet it is the same one, and the brain can somehow recognize this, it can decode highly complex, personal information that no computer could ever handle; it can “filter away” the lines and the scars, the changing hues, and all the rest of the camouflage of the years and simultaneously “see” the original face with pristine clarity. This faculty is so familiar to us that we barely give it a second thought, and yet it really is quite remarkable, way beyond the reach of modern technology. But it is also much more mercurial in nature than ordinary thought processes, such as the ponderous form of logical cognition required to write a page of a book like this.

Unlike intuition, memory can, in fact, be experimentally observed, and important new neurophysiological research now suggests that the brain cells or whatever else is responsible for this extraordinary faculty are not housed in any particular region of the brain, but are distributed evenly throughout its structure. This suggests that memory at least, one of the primary functions of the brain, is a manifestation of the holographic principle, the principle of inner octaves, where the whole exists in every part.