Join Our Email List Email:

By Frank DeFreitas

Winds of change are blowing. Call it the "new age", call it "the age of enlightenment", call it whatever you want -- but one thing is certain: holography and holographic principles are making in-roads into the collective conscienceness of mass culture in the US and abroad.

With an increasingly greater shift away from each regions' traditional cultural philosophies, ardent followers are accepting the holographic "model" in greater and greater numbers.

The hologram itself is serving as a model of reality -- a model that many would be hard pressed to explain without.

These theories and ideas have their American roots in the West Coast culture of the late 50's and early 60's. Advocates of the holographic model were artists, beat poets and philosophers of the era. Most were followers of Eastern philosophy (the real root of the movement). This was not "pop" culture, but a mixture of avant garde and bohemianism. Thinkers. Contemplators.

What are these ideas and philosophies that we speak of? Some say a realization of our relationship to each other and the universe. An unbroken whole. A change in our fragmentary thought processes. The idea that one action cannot be taken without effecting everything else in the whole . . . a connection between point A and point B without the space or time between the two points.

For many of these ideas, the hologram is used as a model for explanation. The fact that a hologram can be broken into many pieces, yet each piece still contains the entire image, works well as a physical explanation.

One idea states that the functioning of the brain is holographic. The brain stores its data, especially memory, throughout its entire volume. Removing a section merely "dims" the entire picture rather than eliminating a portion of it. Everything we experience, including solid objects, can be reduced to atoms, and below that, frequencies or vibrations. The brain interprets these frequencies and mathematically reconstructs them as "solid" reality.

The fact that in holographic theory, one may travel from point A to point B without transversing the space or time between the two points has led to the idea that the reason we could never record any transfer of energy between two subjects in telepathy is because in the realm in which the event was taking place . . . there was no need to pass through the physical space in the first place.

Experiments have shown that elementary "particles" have the ability to communicate with each other, over vast amounts of space instantaneously. Although not earth-shaking in its content now, this one finding may prove to be the most significant discovery of this Century. Only the future will tell.

The Golden Age of Holography
Technological advances are rarely used to their fullest potential by the first generation of users. Only in later generations does a medium become self-defined by its own inherent qualities. Holography's biggest impact is yet to come -- holographic principles being applied to the arts, sciences and humanities.

The concept of thinking in a spatial, rather than linear manner is at the very heart of holographic principles. While the clock and calendar seem to remind us that things move in a forward, linear manner, holography teaches us that time (past, present and future) exist simultaneously. While Newtonian physics states "what goes up, must come down", holography teaches us that up and down are useless terms that should be replaced by inward or outward -- enfolding/unfolding. When you throw a ball "up" into the air, it doesn't really go up, it goes out -- away from the Earth.

Space. Time. Physical and non-physical. These are all part of holography. A big part. Whether a hologram is an abstract work of art depicting these principles, or an embossed hologram on a box of cereal, this bigger "holo-view" is there also. Waiting. Holding steadfast while a generation evolves and becomes conscious of the cosmic implications of this most profound medium.

And evolution is the key word here -- developing a higher order of holographic reasoning as a race. A most fascinating example of this is the sense of color, which did not evolve to its present state until quite recently. Xenophanes knew of three colors of the rainbow only -- purple, red and yellow. Aristotle spoke of the tri-colored rainbow. The poets of the Iliad, Odyssey and the Bible ignore the blue color of the sky completely. Given that the skies in the areas of these compositions are the most vivid blue on the planet, this omission can hardly be attributed to accident. Etymology assures us that at the time the subsequent names for blue were all merged in the names for black.

As it was for the evolution of color-sense, so shall it be for the evolution of holo-sense. Just as each of our mental faculties has its own average age for appearing from the time of birth, when a new faculty appears in a race it will be found in one individual, later in a few individuals and still later in half the members; and so on, until it permeates the race to such a degree that an individual who misses having the faculty is regarded as "deficient".

Yes, holography is more than holograms on the wall. It contains answers to many bigger, perplexing questions. But the biggest question of all is: When will this holo-consciousness become assimilated into the collective minds of all? This era, when finally realized, will truly become known as the golden age of holography.

For Further Study:
There are vast amounts of books published on the "new age" and while many are excellent attempts at describing new ideas and theories, many are still just pop culture manuals that will be read and discarded like so many Age of Aquarius-style books of the 60's and 70's. However, many publications do exist that take an intelligent and critical look at these ideas. I would like to list a few titles for your inspection and, hopefully, they are still in print. If they are not, amazon.com has an "out of print" service where they will locate the title for you. These titles should give you an opportunity to become familiar with another aspect of holography that we usually don't think of on a day to day basis. And will certainly fill the many gaps that an article of this length and nature can provide.

The Holographic Paradigm
and Other Paradoxes
KEN WILBER
New Science Library

Wholeness and The Implicate Order
DAVID BOHM
ARK Publishing

The Wholeness of Life
KRISHNAMURTI
Harper & Row