Universe as a Super Hologram

You may have heard about the startling parallels between recent discoveries in quantum physics and ancient beliefs of Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism through Books such as The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra in 1975 and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav’s in 1979.

“Holographic Paradigm” is a continuation of this shiny happy alliance with a particular model of the universe that seemed to explain not only puzzling scientific phenomena but psychic experiences as well. The holographic paradigm was so named because of certain very unusual feature of holograms.

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.
Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain Aspect's findings.
University of London physicist David Bohm explained Aspect's findings by suggesting that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. The basic process for creating a hologram involves the use of a laser and a beam splitter, an optical device that sends half the light in each of two directions. One of the beams illuminates the object you’re recording, and the light reflected from the object collides with the second beam. When these two beams meet, the effect is much like what you’d see if you tossed a pebble into a pond and then, as the ripples were still spreading, tossed in another pebble. The pattern formed where the two sets of waves meet is called an interference pattern, and that is what is recorded on film when a hologram is made. Today it’s common to see reflective holograms that can be viewed under ordinary light. Originally, however, holograms could be viewed only by exposing the film to the same type of laser light used to create it. If you were to look at the film with the naked eye, all you’d see would be patterns of ripples; shine the right kind of light onto it, though, and the image emerges in all its three-dimensional glory.
This type of hologram has another very curious property. If you cut the film in half and then expose just one piece to the laser light, you’ll still see the entire image. In fact, you can keep making smaller and smaller pieces, and each one will still display the whole image rather than just part of the image—though the clarity degrades as the pieces get smaller.
The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.
In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. 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.

As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

The holographic paradigm—and, for that matter, the entire movement to integrate physics and mysticism—has lost a lot of steam over the last decade or so.David Bohm died in 1992 without convincing many physicists of his views; and most of the prominent advocates of the model have moved on to other interests. It’s not that the theory is any less interesting or plausible than it ever was, but there’s just not a whole lot one can do with the notion.It is certainly fascinating to ponder a unified theory that explains the mysteries of physics, time, space, consciousness, and mysticism.