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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
smell is in 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.
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