The Holographic Universe (50 page)

An Evolutionary
Thrust toward Higher Consciousness

Science may not be the
only force that offers us passage to the land of nonwhere. In his book
Heading
toward Omega
Ring points out that there is compelling evidence that NDEs
are on the increase. As we have seen, in tribal cultures individuals who have
NDEs are often so transformed that they become shamans. Modern NDEers become
spiritually transformed as well, mutating from their pre-NDE personalities into
more loving, compassionate, and even more psychic individuals. From this Ring
concludes that perhaps what we are witnessing is “the
skamanizing of modern
humanity.
” But if this is so, why are NDEs increasing? Ring believes that
the answer is as simple as it is profound; what we are witnessing is “
an
evolutionary thrust toward higher consciousness for all humanity.
”

And NDEs may not be the
only transformative phenomenon bubbling up from the collective human psyche.
Grosso believes that the increase in Marian visions during the last century has
evolutionary implications as well. Similarly, numerous researchers, including
Raschke and Vallee, feel that the explosion of UFO sightings in the last
several decades has evolutionary significance. Several investigators, including
Ring, have pointed out that UFO encounters actually resemble shamanic
initiations and may be further evidence of the shamanizing of modern humanity.
Strieber agrees. “I think it's rather obvious that, whether [the UFO phenomenon
is being] done by somebody or [is happening] naturally, what we're dealing with
is an exponential leap from one species to another. I would suspect that what
we're looking at is the process of evolution in action.”

If such speculations are
true, what is the purpose of this evolutionary transformation? There appears to
be two answers. Numerous ancient traditions speak of a time when the hologram
of physical reality was much more plastic than it is now, much more like the
amorphous and fluid reality of the afterlife dimension. For example, the
Australian aborigines say that there was a time when the entire world was
dreamtime. Edgar Cayce echoed this sentiment and asserted that the earth was
“at first merely in the nature of thought-forms or visualization made by
pushing themselves out of themselves in whatever manner desired. . . . Then
came materiality as such into the earth, through Spirit pushing itself into
matter.”

The aborigines assert
that the day will come when the earth returns to the dreamtime. In the spirit
of pure speculation, one might wonder if, as we learn to manipulate the
hologram of reality more and more, we will see the fulfillment of this
prophecy. As we become more adept at tinkering with what Jahn and Dunne call
the interface between consciousness and its environment, is it possible for us
to experience a reality that is once again malleable? If this is true, we will
need to learn much more than we presently know to manipulate such a plastic
environment safely, and perhaps that is one purpose of the evolutionary
processes that seem to be unfolding in our midst.

Many ancient traditions
also assert that humanity did not originate on the earth, and that our true
home is with God, or at least in a nonphysical and more paradisiacal realm of
pure spirit. For instance, there is a Hindu myth that human consciousness began
as a ripple that decided to leave the ocean of “consciousness as such,
timeless, spaceless, infinite and eternal.” Awakening to itself, it forgot that
it was a part of this infinite ocean, and felt isolated and separated. Loye has
argued that Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden may also be a
version of this myth, an ancient memory of how human consciousness, somewhere
in its unfathomable past, left its home in the implicate and forgot that it was
a part of the cosmic wholeness of all things. In this view the earth is a kind
of playground “in which one is free to experience all the pleasures of the
flesh provided one realizes that one is a holographic projection of a . . .
higher-order spatial dimension.”

If this is true, the
evolutionary fires that are beginning to flicker and dance through our
collective psyche may be our wake-up call, the trumpet note informing us that
our true home is elsewhere and we can return there if we wish. Strieber, for
one, believes this is precisely why UFOs are here: “I think that they are
probably midwifing our birth into the nonphysical world—which is their origin.
My impression is that the physical world is only a small instant in a much larger
context and that reality is primarily unfolding in a non-physical way. I don't
think that physical reality is the original source of being. I think that
being, as consciousness, probably predates the physical.”

Writer Terence McKenna,
another longtime supporter of the holographic model, agrees:

What this seems to be
about is that from the time of the awareness of the existence of the soul until
the resolution of the apocalyptic potential, there are roughly fifty thousand
years. We are now, there can be no doubt, in the final historical seconds of
that crisis—a crisis which involves the end of history, our departure from the
planet, [and] the triumph over death. We are, in fact, closing distance with
the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter—the freeing of life
from the dark chrysalis of matter.

Of course these are only
speculations. But whether we are on the very brink of a transition, as Strieber
and McKenna suggest, or whether that watershed is still some ways off in the
future, it is apparent that we are following some track of spiritual evolution.
Given the holographic nature of the universe, it is also apparent that at least
something like the above two possibilities awaits us somewhere and somewhen.

And lest we be tempted
to assume that freedom from the physical is the end of human evolution, there
is evidence that the more plastic and imaginal realm of the hereafter is also a
mere stepping stone. For example, Swedenborg said that beyond the heaven he
visited was another heaven, one so brilliant and formless to his perceptions
that it appeared only as “a streaming of light.” NDEers have also occasionally
described these even more unfathomably tenuous realms. “There are many higher
planes, and to get back to God, to reach the plane where His spirit resides,
you have to drop your garment each time until your spirit is truly free,”
states one of Whitton's subjects. “The learning process never stops. . . .
Sometimes we are allowed glimpses of the higher planes—each one is lighter and
brighter than the one before.”

It may be frightening to
some that reality seems to become increasingly frequency-like as one penetrates
deeper into the implicate. And this is understandable. It is obvious that we
are still like children who need the security of a coloring book, not yet ready
to draw free-form and without lines to guide our clumsy hands. To be plunged
into Swedenborg's realm of streaming light would be tantamount to plunging us
into a completely fluid LSD hallucination. And we are not yet mature enough or
in enough control of our emotions, attitudes, and beliefs to deal with the
monsters our psyches would create for ourselves there.

But perhaps that is why
we are learning how to deal with small doses of the omnijective here, in the
form of the relatively limited confrontations with the imaginal that UFOs and
other similar experiences provide.

And perhaps that is why
the beings of light tell us again and again that the purpose of life is to
learn.

We are indeed on a
shaman's journey, mere children struggling to become technicians of the sacred.
We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a
universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one
lesson stands out above all others. As long as the formlessness and
breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue
to dream a hologram for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well defined.

But we must always heed
Bohm's warning that the conceptual pigeonholes we use to parse out the universe
are of our own making. They do not exist “out there,” for “out there” is only
the indivisible totality. Brahman. And when we outgrow any given set of
conceptual pigeonholes we must always be prepared to move on, to advance from
soul-state to soul-state, as Sri Aurobindo put it, and from illumination to
illumination. For our purpose appears to be as simple as it is endless.

We are, as the
aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity.