The holographic universe: the underlying unity
FEBRUARY 20, 2019 (updated on September 20, 2023)
“You’re not a drop in the ocean, you’re the ocean in a drop.” [1]
Table of contents
“I think my life in physics is divided into three periods… At first I thought it was all made of particles … Then, that everything was made of fields (…). In the end, my impression is that it’s all about information.”
JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER [2]
The holographic principle
All is information
Imagine you want to buy a house. One of the first things you’re probably going to do is to draw up a list of selection criteria. Objective criteria – such as perhaps surface area, price, location, etc. – from which you will select the houses to visit. As you visit, if you set these criteria aside for a moment and simply pay attention to how you feel inside each home, you will probably notice differences. They may range from a sense of security or well-being to varying degrees of discomfort. And a priori, you will have no rational explanation for these feelings.
This may be why you will be placing more emphasis on objective criteria. After all, unlike feelings, they are tangible and directly observable. However, that would be underestimating the information your inner fort sends you. But if you did, it would not change the fact that, from an information point of view, all these data – the objective criteria and the way you feel – are of equal value. That is to say: whether it comes from an inner feeling or your interpretation of the outside, this data is simply information.
Before it was a house as you see it, it was thought out, then architect and future owners discussed it, and finally workmen shaped it. All the information emanating from the house as you see it has therefore at one time or another been “projected from the inside out”, if such a distinction exists [3]. Those who have not experienced this fate would still be information. They would simply not be visible, they would not have been manifested in any tangible way.
Memory and resonance
Thoughts, words and actions make up the totality of the events that have taken place in this house since it has existed. They have helped to shape it as you see it, and as you eventually feel it. They can also be assimilated to information. There is more information inside a room than on its walls, since, from a physical point of view, there is more space – of particles, in fact – in a volume than on the surface that contains it.
However, there is a principle in physics called the holographic principle. What does it tell us? That all the information contained in a volume is stored on the surface that contains it, up to a quarter of that surface. A bit like recording the music produced by a whole orchestra on the surface of a CD. The CD contains information about the music produced but of course not the orchestra itself. Thus all the information of a room is stored on its walls, floor and ceiling in a holographic way. Or, to put it another way, every surface keeps the memory of the events that took place in the volume it contains. The information about these events being holographically projected onto the surface.
This is why, depending on the relationship that will be established between the information stored on the walls of a room and you, you will be able to have as many different sensations as the houses you visit. You will resonate – or not – with certain information, depending on your personal history. Since each of us is unique, we will resonate with more or less different information. A person like Madeleine (see My Story) will be able to “retrieve” information just by passing her hand over the walls of the house. It will thus be aware of events that have taken place there.
What's a hologramm?
The holographic principle owes its name to an analogy with holography. It was discovered in 1948 by the Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor and earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971. Holography is a physical process that makes it possible to record on a surface – using a specific type of light, the laser – information about the volume of an object. This information is recorded on a holographic plate. If it is later illuminated with the same type of light, it will then generate the hologram of the object, whose volume will be projected virtually into space.
All information about the object is fully recorded at each point on the holographic plate. Therefore, if this surface is broken down into even billions of pieces, each piece will always contain – in a smaller version – the original image in its entirety. In other words: the whole is engrammed in the part, and the part is included in the whole.
It was the physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft who originated the concept of the holographic principle. This applies to the three blacks and can be defined as follows:
“All the information contained in the volume of a black hole can be expressed in terms of information (…) on the horizon of the black hole [4], thus preserving the information as a “holographic fingerprint” “
MARC MISTAIEN [5]
Interestingly, Nassim Haramein considers that the universe is only made up of black holes at different scales (see the article The fractal and holographic universe). This principle can therefore be applied very widely and even to the universe itself.
David Bohm, the science and the philosophy
David Bohm is one of the first physicists to have put forward the hypothesis of a holographic universe. By the time I learned about his theory, I was already well on my way to physics. However, I was not yet familiar with the works of Nassim Haramein, nor those of the philosopher Michel Bitbol. I then thought I was light years away from the philosophy and spirituality that had marked the beginning of my investigation of consciousness. I had no idea David Bohm would lead me straight to… Jiddu Krishnamaurti. And even further from imagining that the two men had been friends.
Actually, it was David Bohm who introduced me to Krishnamurti. Might as well say I was shocked. I found it incredible that relativistic physicists and quantum physicists could not agree, but that a physicist and a philosopher could. And share a common vision of life and the universe. They even set out their reflections in two books : The Limits of Thought [6] and Abolished Time [7].
Then I found out that Eckhart Tolle was very inspired by Krishnamurti. I then suddenly had the strange sensation of having advanced in my exploration of consciousness without having left my starting point. Specifically, I had returned to my starting point by having changed. As the universe finally does in its learning process [8]. It took me a while to recover from that discovery. With every reason to be particularly interested in the theory of the holographic universe.
Implicit and explicit order
“I’ve never been able to see a separation between science and philosophy.”
DAVID BOHM [9]
This statement by David Bohm, who has made important contributions to quantum physics, theoretical physics and philosophy, forms the basis on which he built his theory. For this scientist who collaborated with Einstein, there is simply no separation between consciousness and matter. There is only a semblance of separation between the two.
Concretely, David Bohm considered that reality as we apprehend it with our senses or other measuring instruments is only an expression of another level of reality. An underlying level. He thus spoke of an explicate (or explicit) order and an implicate (or implicit) order of reality.
A perpetual exchange
In the explicate order, the shapes appear to us as separated from each other. But this is only a misperception of the implicate order – from which these forms are extracted – and in which everything is united, in perpetual exchange with itself and therefore in perpetual updating. Everything in the universe would constantly go from implicate to explicate. Specifically, any representation in the explicate order would be a holographic expression of the implicate order. This flow, called holo-movement, would explain the relationship between matter and consciousness… through continuous feedback between the two. David Bohm said:
“What is implied here is that even this “new whole” will reveal itself as an aspect of another “new whole” later on. Holonomy should not be seen as the fixed and final goal of scientific research, but rather as a movement in which “new everything” is continually manifesting itself.”
DAVID BOHM [10]
To explain the implicate order, David Bohm used three analogies:
The aquarium fish filmed from 2 different angles
The idea of this experiment was to show that two things can appear to us as separate simply because we look at them from two different points of view. So if we look at two video screens, on each of which the same fish appears filmed simultaneously from two different angles, we can think that they are two different fish. However, after careful observation of the movements of “the” fish, we will realize that they are one and the same fish. Thus, the separation was only due to a misperception of a unified phenomenon.
The insoluble drop of ink diluted in glycerine
This experiment involved a box with a crank handle containing glycerine and a drop of ink. When you turned the crank, you could see the drop stretching until it disappeared. But if the movement was reversed, then a trickle of ink would begin to re-form until it became the original drop again. Thus the ink, in its expanded state (diluted in glycerin), kept an unfolded order (contained in a drop). An order likely to reoccur.
The hologram
For David Bohm, the implicate order would be like a giant hologram, a distributed yet indivisible whole. Why? Because each fragment that would be extracted from it would still contain all the original information. Any form of separation would therefore only be a decoy, due to the limited viewpoint of the observer. At a deeper level of reality – the implicate order – everything would actually be connected.
Brain and hologram
Shortly before David Bohm proposed his holographic vision of the universe, another theory based on holography was developed in a completely different field. In 1969, the Austrian physiologist Karl Pribram put forward a fascinating hypothesis: the brain uses holographic models in its processes of perception and restitution of its environment. In an almost amusing way, one can see in the way these two theories have manifested themselves a concrete application of the holographic concept. Indeed, it implies that a change in one area becomes immediately and implicitly available everywhere else. And therefore be likely to manifest itself in another area.
Non-localized memory
A pioneer in research on the cerebral cortex, Karl Pribram has worked extensively in the field of memory. His work has led him to move from a mechanistic conception of memory, according to which certain types of memories are stored at specific locations in the brain, to a non-localized memory, which therefore does not rely on this type of correspondence. To develop his theory, he drew on the work of Dennis Gabor. To create the first holograms, he used a complex series of equations. These are known as Fourier transforms, and owe their name to the 18th century French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier.
According to Karl Pribram, the brain converts frequencies into objects in our reality, as he explains:
“Different brain cells react at different frequencies and the brain functions as a frequency analyzer that breaks down complex frequency patterns into their components, which are then converted into “objects” of “physical reality” in a process similar to illuminating an interference pattern with a laser beam.”
Holograms and fractals
This analysis of interference patterns is mathematical, and depends on Fourier’s theorem. This states that any non-sinusoidal periodic signal can be considered as the sum of an infinite number of sine waves of different amplitudes and frequencies. These waves are called harmonics of the original signal because they are multiples of the frequency of this signal.
So, for example, a signal with a frequency of 10 Hz is composed of a wave with a frequency of 10 Hz, itself composed of a wave with a frequency of 20 Hz, itself composed of a wave with a frequency of 30 Hz etc. The harmonic corresponding to the same frequency as the original signal is called the first harmonic or fundamental harmonic. The following are called second harmonic (twice the fundamental frequency), third harmonic (three times the fundamental frequency) and so on. In other words, Fourier transforms are fractals, the analysis of which allows the decomposition and reconstruction of a signal without loss of information.
Engrams
Karl Pribram linked this work to another discovery: that of John Eccles, known for his work on the synapse and winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1963. This Australian neurophysiologist has demonstrated the very localized propagation of electrical waves around each of the thousands of synapses in each of the brain’s neurons. Karl Pribram’s idea at the time was to consider that the billions of waves generated in the brain formed holograms. And that these could serve as a biophysical support for the processes of thought and memory.
He has also made a major contribution to research on engrams, i.e. “[the] imprint [s] left in the brain or nervous system by some event and capable of being reactivated by appropriate stimulation” [12]. For him, in short, a hologram would be a vibratory memory. This amounts to talking about the holographic principle and, as in the analogy of the house, the information stored on the walls of the rooms.
I now invite you to discover the third and final part of our journey from duality to unity: Unity, from ether to space.
To find out more about resonance and the holographic principle, see Gravity, entropy and self-organization.
Key points
- Every surface keeps the memory of the events that took place in the volume it contains (holographic principle).
- The holographic principle applies to black holes. It therefore applies very broadly according to the theory of Nassim Haramein, who considers that the universe is made up only of black holes at different scales.
- The brain would use holographic models in its perception and restitution processes of its environment.
Notes & references
[1] Jalal al Din Rumi, Mystical Poems of Rumi, University of Chicago Press, 2009, free translation
[2] WHEELER John Archibald, Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam – A Life in Physics, traduction libre, New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2000 (new edition), p.63
[3] See the first article in this series Objectivity, the blind spot of science.
[4] The event horizon is the limit beyond which the attraction of the black hole is considered irreversible.
[5] MISTAIEN Marc. (nov/dec 2013). Et si Nassim Haramein avait raison (And if Nassim Haramein was right), In : Nexus n°89, p.28, free translation
[6] KRISHNAMURTI Jiddu et BOHM David, Les limites de la pensée, Paris : Le livre de poche, 2006, free translation
[7] KRISHNAMURTI Jiddu et BOHM David, Le temps aboli, Monaco : Editions du Rocher, 1989, free translation
[8] See also the article How do we learn? on this subject
[9] BOHM David et PEAT David, Science, order, and creativity, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010, introduction p.Xi
[10] BOHM David, La plénitude de l’univers, Monaco : Editions du Rocher, 1987, p.167, free translation
[11] PRIBRAM Karl, quoted by DUTHEIL Brigitte, L’univers superlumineux, Paris : Ed. Sand, 1994, p.127, free translation
[12] According to the WIKTIONARY.
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