The Holographic Universe (10 page)

Ullman believes that
certain aspects of holographic thinking are even more pronounced in
manicidepressives. Whereas the schizophrenic only gets whiffs of the
holographic order, the manic is deeply involved in it and grandiosely
identifies with its infinite potential. “He can't keep up with all the thoughts
and ideas that come at him in so overwhelming a way,” states Ullman. “He has to
lie, dissemble, and manipulate those about him so as to accommodate to his
expansive vista. The end result, of course, is mostly chaos and confusion mixed
with occasional outbursts of creativity and success in consensual reality.” In
turn, the manic becomes depressed after he returns from this surreal vacation
and once again faces the hazards and chance occurrences of everyday life.

If it is true that we
all encounter aspects of the implicate order when we dream, why don't these
encounters have the same effect on us as they do on psychotics? One reason,
says Ullman, is that we leave the unique and challenging logic of the dream
behind when we wake. Because of his condition the psychotic is forced to
contend with it while simultaneously trying to function in everyday reality.
Ullman also theorizes that when we dream, most of us have a natural protective mechanism
that keeps us from coming into contact with more of the implicate order than we
can cope with.

Lucid Dreams and
Parallel Universes

In recent years
psychologists have become increasingly interested in
lucid dreams
, a
type of dream in which the dreamer maintains full waking consciousness and is
aware that he or she is dreaming. In addition to the consciousness factor,
lucid dreams are unique in several other ways. Unlike normal dreams in which
the dreamer is primarily a passive participant, in a lucid dream the dreamer is
often able to control the dream in various ways—turn nightmares into pleasant
experiences, change the setting of the dream, and/or summon up particular
individuals or situations. Lucid dreams are also much more vivid and suffused
with vitality than normal dreams. In a lucid dream marble floors seem eerily
solid and real, flowers, dazzlingly colorful and fragrant, and everything is
vibrant and strangely energized. Researchers studying lucid dreams believe they
may lead to new ways to stimulate personal growth, enhance self-confidence,
promote mental and physical health, and facilitate creative problem solving.

At the 1987 annual
meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams held in Washington, D.C.,
physicist Fred Alan Wolf delivered a talk in which he asserted that the
holographic model may help explain this unusual phenomenon. Wolf, an occasional
lucid dreamer himself, points out that a piece of holographic film actually
generates two images, a virtual image that appears to be in the space behind
the film, and a real image that comes into focus in the space in front of the
film. One difference between the two is that the light waves that compose a
virtual image seem to be diverging
from
an apparent focus or source. As
we have seen, this is an illusion, for the virtual image of a hologram has no
more extension in space than does the image in a mirror. But the real image of
a hologram is formed by light waves that are coming
to
a focus, and this
is not an illusion. The real image does possess extension in space.
Unfortunately, little attention is paid to this real image in the usual
applications of holography because an image that comes into focus in empty air
is invisible and can only be seen when dust particles pass through it, or when
someone blows a puff of smoke through it.

Wolf believes that all
dreams are internal holograms, and ordinary dreams are less vivid because they
are virtual images. However, he thinks the brain also has the ability to
generate real images, and that is exactly what it does when we are dreaming
lucidly. The unusual vibrancy of the lucid dream is due to the fact that the
waves are converging and not diverging. “If there is a ‘viewer’ where these
waves focus, that viewer will be bathed in the scene, and the scene coming to a
focus will ‘contain’ him. In this way the dream experience will appear ‘lucid,’”
observes Wolf.

Like Pribram, Wolf
believes our minds create the illusion of reality “out there” through the same
kind of processes studied by Bekesy. He believes these processes are also what
allows the lucid dreamer to create subjective realities in which things like
marble floors and flowers are as tangible and real as their so-called objective
counterparts. In fact, he thinks our ability to be lucid in our dreams suggests
that there may not be much difference between the world at large and the world
inside our heads. “When the observer and the observed can separate and say this
is the observed and this is the observer, which is an effect one seems to be
having when lucid, then I think it's questionable whether [lucid dreams] should
be considered subjective,” says Wolf.

Wolf postulates that
lucid dreams (and perhaps all dreams) are actually visits to parallel
universes. They are just smaller holograms within the larger and more inclusive
cosmic hologram. He even suggests that the ability to lucid-dream might better
be called parallel universe awareness. “I call it parallel universe awareness
because I believe that parallel universes arise as other images in the
hologram,” Wolf states. This and other similar ideas about the ultimate nature
of dreaming will be explored in greater depth later in the book.

Hitching a Ride
on the Infinite Subway

The idea that we are
able to access images from the collective unconscious, or even visit parallel
dream universes, pales beside the conclusions of another prominent researcher
who has been influenced by the holographic model. He is Stanislav Grof, chief
of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and an
assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine. After more than thirty years of studying nonordinary states of
consciousness, Grof has concluded that the avenues of exploration available to
our psyches via holographic interconnectedness are more than vast They are
virtually endless.

Grof first became interested
in nonordinary states of consciousness in the 1950s while investigating the
clinical uses of the hallucinogen LSD at the Psychiatric Research Institute in
his native Prague, Czechoslovakia. The purpose of his research was to determine
whether LSD had any therapeutic applications. When Grof began his research,
most scientists viewed the LSD experience as little more than a stress
reaction, the brain's way of responding to a noxious chemical. But when Grof
studied the records of his patient's experiences he did not find evidence of
any recurring stress reaction. Instead, there was a definite continuity running
through each of the patient's sessions. “Rather than being unrelated and
random, the experiential content seemed to represent a successive unfolding of
deeper and deeper levels of the unconscious,” says Grof. This suggested that
repeated LSD sessions had important ramifications for the practice and theory
of psychotherapy, and provided Grof and his colleagues with the impetus they
needed to continue the research. The results were striking. It quickly became
clear that serial LSD sessions were able to expedite the psychotherapeutic
process and shorten the time necessary for the treatment of many disorders.
Traumatic memories that had haunted individuals for years were unearthed and
dealt with, and sometimes even serious conditions, such as schizophrenia, were
cured. But what was even more startling was that many of the patients rapidly
moved beyond issues involving their illnesses and into areas that were
uncharted by Western psychology.

One common experience
was the reliving of what it was like to be in the womb. At first Grof thought
these were just imagined experiences, but as the evidence continued to amass he
realized that the knowledge of embryology inherent in the descriptions was
often far superior to the patients’ previous education in the area. Patients
accurately described certain characteristics of the heart sounds of their
mother, the nature of acoustic phenomena in the peritoneal cavity, specific
details concerning blood circulation in the placenta, and even details about
the various cellular and biochemical processes taking place. They also
described important thoughts and feelings their mother had had during pregnancy
and events such as physical traumas she had experienced.

Whenever possible Grof
investigated these assertions, and on several occasions was able to verify them
by questioning the mother and other individuals involved. Psychiatrists,
psychologists, and biologists who experienced prebirth memories during their
training for the program (all the therapists who participated in the study also
had to undergo several sessions of LSD psychotherapy) expressed similar
astonishment at the apparent authenticity of the experiences.

Most disconcerting of
all were those experiences in which the patient's consciousness appeared to
expand beyond the usual boundaries of the ego and explore what it was like to
be other living things and even other objects. For example, Grof had one female
patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female
prehistoric reptile. She not only gave a richly detailed description of what it
felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the
male of the species’ anatomy she found most sexually arousing was a patch of
colored scales on the side of its head. Although the woman had no prior
knowledge of such things, a conversation Grof had with a zoologist later
confirmed that in certain species of reptiles, colored areas on the head do
indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal.

Patients were also able
to tap into the consciousness of their relatives and ancestors. One woman
experienced what it was like to be her mother at the age of three and
accurately described a frightening event that had befallen her mother at the
time. The woman also gave a precise description of the house her mother had
lived in as well as the white pinafore she had been wearing—all details her
mother later confirmed and admitted she had never talked about before. Other
patients gave equally accurate descriptions of events that had befallen
ancestors who had lived decades and even centuries before.

Other experiences
included the accessing of racial and collective memories. Individuals of Slavic
origin experienced what it was like to participate in the conquests of Genghis
Khan's Mongolian hordes, to dance in trance with the Kalahari bushmen, to
undergo the initiation rites of the Australian aborigines, and to die as
sacrificial victims of the Aztecs. And again the descriptions frequently
contained obscure historical facts and a degree of knowledge that was often
completely at odds with the patient's education, race, and previous exposure to
the subject. For instance, one uneducated patient gave a richly detailed
account of the techniques involved in the Egyptian practice of embalming and
mummification, including the form and meaning of various amulets and sepulchral
boxes, a list of the materials used in the fixing of the mummy cloth, the size
and shape of the mummy bandages, and other esoteric facets of Egyptian funeral
services. Other individuals tuned into the cultures of the Far East and not
only gave impressive descriptions of what it was like to have a Japanese,
Chinese, or Tibetan psyche, but also related various Taoist or Buddhist
teachings.

In fact, there did not
seem to be any limit to what Grof s LSD subjects could tap into. They seemed
capable of knowing what it was like to be every animal, and even plant, on the
tree of evolution. They could experience what it was like to be a blood cell,
an atom, a thermonuclear process inside the sun, the consciousness of the
entire planet, and even the consciousness of the entire cosmos. More than that,
they displayed the ability to transcend space and time, and occasionally they
related uncannily accurate precognitive information. In an even stranger vein
they sometimes encountered nonhuman intelligences during their cerebral
travels, discarnate beings, spirit guides from “higher planes of consciousness,”
and other suprahuman entities.

On occasion subjects
also traveled to what appeared to be other universes and other levels of
reality. In one particularly unnerving session a young man suffering from
depression found himself in what seemed to be another dimension. It had an
eerie luminescence, and although he could not see anyone he sensed that it was
crowded with discarnate beings. Suddenly he sensed a presence very close to
him, and to his surprise it began to communicate with him telepathically. It
asked him to please contact a couple who lived in the Moravian city of Kromeriz
and let them know that their son Ladislav was well taken care of and doing all
right. It then gave him the couple's name, street address, and telephone
number.

The information meant
nothing to either Grof or the young man and seemed totally unrelated to the
young man's problems and treatment. Still, Grof could not put it out of his
mind. “After some hesitation and with mixed feelings, I finally decided to do
what certainly would have made me the target of my colleagues’ jokes, had they
found out,” says Grof. “I went to the telephone, dialed the number in Kromeriz,
and asked if I could speak with Ladislav. To my astonishment, the woman on the
other side of the line started to cry. When she calmed down, she told me with a
broken voice: ‘Our son is not with us any more; he passed away, we lost him
three weeks ago.’”