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by Marshall Lefferts
Marshall Lefferts is the author of Cosmometry and an active board member and professor at the Resonance Science Foundation.
Daniel Martin Diaz is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and filmmaker. Trees Speak is a musical duo, from Tucson, Arizona, formed by Daniel and his brother Damian.
Image: Fortune Teller I by Daniel Martin Diaz → @danielmartindiaz
Music Video: Trees Speak by Trees Speak
HOLOGRAPHIC WHOLENESS
When I was a young child in the late 1960’s, my brother, Seth, became interested in the relatively new science and technology of holography. This was my initial exposure to the concept of holography and the first time for seeing the remarkable characteristic of holographic images. How could a flat glass plate display an image of an object such that one could see above, below, side-to-side and partially behind the object? !is was obviously very different from a regular photograph. While a photograph is clearly a flat, 2-dimensional image of a scene, a holographic image is able to represent a scene as a 3-dimensional image that is much more similar to the actual reality we experience. This phenomenon has intrigued me ever since seeing those early holographic images (as it has many others, especially through the simulation of spatial holographic projections in Star Wars and other sci-fi films).
While the science and technology of holography is both fascinating and informative, for our exploration the most essential thing to know about a holographic image is this:
The image of the whole is present at every point.
Whereas with a photograph the image being captured is whole only at one scale — the full size of the photograph — in a hologram the entire image is captured at all scales from the entire holographic plate down to the smallest point on the plate. In fact, if you break the plate into pieces, the entire image will still be present on every piece. The whole image of the object that is facing the plate is captured at every point. It is because of this difference that a holographic image is more closely representative of our 3D experience of reality than is a photograph. This is a huge clue about the actual nature of our every-day reality — it is, in fact, fully holographic. And as it turns out, our visual perceptual experience of reality wouldn’t work the way it does if it were not holographic.
Before going into that, though, there is an important aspect of this principle of wholeness to consider. The word “holo graphic” specifcally refers to a visual representation of an object or scene. It is an appropriate description of capturing the whole image of an object. A holographic image isn’t like a photograph, though. When you look at a holograph made using laser light, you don’t actually see the image of the object. What you see is an abstract pattern of overlapping circles, much like the rings in water when you throw a bunch of pebbles into a pond (an important correlation as we extend this concept into reality as a whole — take note). What you’re seeing is an interference pattern of the light field that is illuminating the holographic plate. It’s actually the waveform information about the whole object that’s being captured, rather than the image itself. As such, we can use the term “hologram” to describe this concept, with the suffix “gram” meaning information. This is key to understanding this principle of wholeness as it pertains to the deeper nature of reality — the information of the whole is present at every point. The cosmos is hologramic.
To date, scientists are debating whether the universe is one big hologram. Numerous magazine articles and scientifc theories have explored this idea, and yet there is typically an assumed limitation imposed upon the concept that makes the quest for an answer more abstract than it needs to be. Quite simply, the model they use for the inquiry is that of a holographic image on a glass plate — a 2-dimensional surface that encodes information and displays a holographic “projection” of 3-dimensional reality. It is conjectured that the universe is just such an illusory projection that resides on a 2-dimensional surface.6 Finding a 2-dimensional surface anywhere in the universe would be the first step to validating such a theory, if such a thing exists. (As Nassim Haramein points out, even a holographic plate has a light-sensitive chemical emulsion that is 3-dimensional in its molecular structure, making it possible to capture the standing wave patterns of the laser light.)
While there is a lot to learn about the holographic principle by studying a so-called 2-dimensional ho lographic image and how it’s created, it is in itself not a sufficient model upon which to base an inquiry into whether reality is holographic. Doing so is akin to analyzing a photograph to describe the nature of reality; we can come to some accurate conclusions, but only in a very limited scope. Applying those conclusions to describe reality will yield equally limited theories. This is why the debate as to whether the universe is a hologram is struggling to find an answer — it’s based upon too limited a model.
The appropriate description of the holographic nature of the cosmos is one that is generalized, wherein the entire field of universal reality is the hologram, rather than only the surfaces.
A simple way of understanding what this means can be illustrated like this: when we make a holo graphic image, we’re simply capturing a “slice” of the generalized holographic information field that is present at the location of the holographic plate. The holographic image is already present in space, not solely a phenomenon of the laser light that is illuminating the object and photosensitive plate. A photograph is doing the same thing; capturing a slice of the generalized image field we call reality, albeit with a more limited amount of information than the holographic image. Holography and photography are only possible because of the generalized nature of the holographic information field that is present everywhere. Whereas a hologram is specifically made with laser light (which is coherent in its frequency and phase waveform), we perceive the generalized hologram of light every day through our eyes, brain and consciousness.
This next statement is one of the most important points to understand as it informs our entire perspec tive on the hologramic nature of the universe being explored in this book:
Perception only works because reality is hologramic.
My understanding of this began one balmy evening as I was driving to my home that was high up a mountain overlooking Santa Barbara, California. I stopped to take in the expansive beauty of the night sky — the stars and planets scintillating in the clarity of the moment. As I quietly gazed at them, marvel ing in the cosmic wonder of it all, I came to the realization that the image of every one of those pinpoint light sources was present at every point in space around me. Wherever I put my eye, the image of the whole night sky was there. !is would be true a foot away, a mile away or 100,000 miles off the surface of the planet. The image of the whole is present at every point; therefore, the entire field of light around us and throughout the cosmos must be holographic. We are inseparably living in a cosmic hologram!
This fundamental quality of wholeness is essential to the function of our visual and auditory perception. In fact, our perceptual framework is entirely dependent upon there being a generalized hologram ic information field. Let’s explore how this is so…
In the case of vision, the light field we’re immersed in is completely holographic. By definition, then, the image of the whole is present at every point within the light field, as in the night sky example. To under stand this in relation to your personal experience, visualize that the light that is reflecting off of every object around you and emanating from every light source in sight is ALL converging at EVERY point in the field of space surrounding you. As such, the image of the whole is present at each point. There is nowhere that this phenomenon of optical physics is not occurring. The entire field of light is holographic. It is because of this that we can see our surrounding reality as a seamless whole, with out gaps or voids in the image field. It is, by necessity, a relative image, being unique to our angle of perception based upon where we place our eyes in the field (otherwise there would be no relative reality), but it is an image of the whole nonetheless. Because of this, I propose a new postulate of holographic physics: The angle of incidence equals the angle of perception. The relative holographic image of the whole is entirely predicated upon your unique perspective!
“YOU” ARE EVERYWHERE
Here’s another way of seeing this relative to your own presence in the cosmos. Wherever you are reading this, take a look around yourself and notice the environment surrounding you. All objects — be they walls, ceiling, chairs, computer, people, trees, sky — are reflecting photons of light that are reaching your eye. As in the night sky example, every point in space contains an image of the whole environment. This means that at every point on the surface of your skin and clothes, the light that is illuminating you is doing so with an image of all that is surrounding you. Imagine a picture of your present environment imprinted into your skin at every point. This is literally what’s happening.
Conversely, your image is also present at every point in space. Photons of light reflect off of each point on your body in all outward directions. Imagine this: I can take a mirror and place it anywhere in the space around you and you will see your image reflected back. This means your image is everywhere. (See photograph on next page.) People around you can see you wherever they are in a line of sight. Even if they’re 50 miles away and have a strong enough telescope, they can see your whole image. When you step outside on a clear day, your image is literally filling all space around you, even out to the moon and beyond. Just as you are illuminated by photons reflected from all points in your environment, your environment is illuminated by photons reflected off of you. “You” are everywhere.
So, in each point in space surrounding you there is both an image of your total environment and an image of you; a complete image converging into every localized point in space, no matter how small a point you can conceive of.
Mirrors also only work the way they do because the light field is ho lographic. If it weren’t, when you looked in a mirror you would see gaps in the image where light information was missing. A mirror is not fully holographic, of course. It is more photographic, reflecting what appears as a 2D image. This is simply a “stepping down” of the perceptual framework into a more primary duality of actual and reflected objects. The actual object is the full holographic manifestation while the reflected object is a “slice” out of the holographic field into which the actual object’s image is projected (as photons of light reflecting off of the object in all directions). This photograph of Coco Chanel by Robert Doisneau shows how her image is holographically surrounding her as each mirror reflects a slightly different angle of view.
So our visual perception works the way it does because the light field is holographic. It simply would not work if it weren’t. Wherever we place our eyes, the generalized field of light is converging to a point at that location, providing us the holographic information of visual reality.
The same “image of the whole in every point” phenomenon also holds true for sound and our experi ence of acoustic reality. Sound waves converge from direct and refected sources at every point within the generalized sound field. The information of the whole soundscape is present at every point — reality is also holosonic. If it were not this way there would be gaps in the field where we could not hear certain sounds.
Together, the generalized field of light and sound that makes up the primary experience of our reality is what I call the Sonoluminous Holofield. Sono is sound, lumen is light, holo is whole, and field is generalized presence. The sonoluminous holofield is our everyday experience of reality. The information of the whole is present at every point. If it weren’t, you would experience places where the visual and acoustic felds would not be there, leaving visual and auditory gaps in your perceptual experience of reality.
Suffice it to say that shifting from a 2-D surface model to a 3-D (and even 4-D) generalized model offers a more accurate and whole concept of the hologramic nature of the cosmos. This principle of wholeness will be discussed further as we explore the rest of our model of cosmometry, especially as it relates to the hologramic nature of physical reality described in unified physics. For now, as we close this introduction to it, consider this question, especially in light of the current scientifc debate as to whether or not the cosmos is holographic:
Is it possible to make a holographic image in a non-holographic universe?
“The value of the hologram in this context is that it may help to bring this new notion of order to our attention in a sensibly perceptible way; but of course, the hologram is only an instrument whose function is to make a static record (or ‘snapshot’) of this order. The actual order itself which has thus been recorded is in the complex movement of electromagnetic fields, in the form of light waves. Such movement of light waves is present everywhere and in principle enfolds the entire universe of space (and time) in each region (as can be demonstrated in any such region by placing one’s eye or a telescope there, which will ‘unfold’ this content).” – David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
GO TO 3, 6, 14, 21, 40, 41, 65
by Marshall Lefferts
Marshall Lefferts is the author of Cosmometry and an active board member and professor at the Resonance Science Foundation.
Daniel Martin Diaz is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and filmmaker. Trees Speak is a musical duo, from Tucson, Arizona, formed by Daniel and his brother Damian.
Image: Fortune Teller I by Daniel Martin Diaz → @danielmartindiaz
Music Video: Trees Speak by Trees Speak
HOLOGRAPHIC WHOLENESS
When I was a young child in the late 1960’s, my brother, Seth, became interested in the relatively new science and technology of holography. This was my initial exposure to the concept of holography and the first time for seeing the remarkable characteristic of holographic images. How could a flat glass plate display an image of an object such that one could see above, below, side-to-side and partially behind the object? !is was obviously very different from a regular photograph. While a photograph is clearly a flat, 2-dimensional image of a scene, a holographic image is able to represent a scene as a 3-dimensional image that is much more similar to the actual reality we experience. This phenomenon has intrigued me ever since seeing those early holographic images (as it has many others, especially through the simulation of spatial holographic projections in Star Wars and other sci-fi films).
While the science and technology of holography is both fascinating and informative, for our exploration the most essential thing to know about a holographic image is this:
The image of the whole is present at every point.
Whereas with a photograph the image being captured is whole only at one scale — the full size of the photograph — in a hologram the entire image is captured at all scales from the entire holographic plate down to the smallest point on the plate. In fact, if you break the plate into pieces, the entire image will still be present on every piece. The whole image of the object that is facing the plate is captured at every point. It is because of this difference that a holographic image is more closely representative of our 3D experience of reality than is a photograph. This is a huge clue about the actual nature of our every-day reality — it is, in fact, fully holographic. And as it turns out, our visual perceptual experience of reality wouldn’t work the way it does if it were not holographic.
Before going into that, though, there is an important aspect of this principle of wholeness to consider. The word “holo graphic” specifcally refers to a visual representation of an object or scene. It is an appropriate description of capturing the whole image of an object. A holographic image isn’t like a photograph, though. When you look at a holograph made using laser light, you don’t actually see the image of the object. What you see is an abstract pattern of overlapping circles, much like the rings in water when you throw a bunch of pebbles into a pond (an important correlation as we extend this concept into reality as a whole — take note). What you’re seeing is an interference pattern of the light field that is illuminating the holographic plate. It’s actually the waveform information about the whole object that’s being captured, rather than the image itself. As such, we can use the term “hologram” to describe this concept, with the suffix “gram” meaning information. This is key to understanding this principle of wholeness as it pertains to the deeper nature of reality — the information of the whole is present at every point. The cosmos is hologramic.
To date, scientists are debating whether the universe is one big hologram. Numerous magazine articles and scientifc theories have explored this idea, and yet there is typically an assumed limitation imposed upon the concept that makes the quest for an answer more abstract than it needs to be. Quite simply, the model they use for the inquiry is that of a holographic image on a glass plate — a 2-dimensional surface that encodes information and displays a holographic “projection” of 3-dimensional reality. It is conjectured that the universe is just such an illusory projection that resides on a 2-dimensional surface.6 Finding a 2-dimensional surface anywhere in the universe would be the first step to validating such a theory, if such a thing exists. (As Nassim Haramein points out, even a holographic plate has a light-sensitive chemical emulsion that is 3-dimensional in its molecular structure, making it possible to capture the standing wave patterns of the laser light.)
While there is a lot to learn about the holographic principle by studying a so-called 2-dimensional ho lographic image and how it’s created, it is in itself not a sufficient model upon which to base an inquiry into whether reality is holographic. Doing so is akin to analyzing a photograph to describe the nature of reality; we can come to some accurate conclusions, but only in a very limited scope. Applying those conclusions to describe reality will yield equally limited theories. This is why the debate as to whether the universe is a hologram is struggling to find an answer — it’s based upon too limited a model.
The appropriate description of the holographic nature of the cosmos is one that is generalized, wherein the entire field of universal reality is the hologram, rather than only the surfaces.
A simple way of understanding what this means can be illustrated like this: when we make a holo graphic image, we’re simply capturing a “slice” of the generalized holographic information field that is present at the location of the holographic plate. The holographic image is already present in space, not solely a phenomenon of the laser light that is illuminating the object and photosensitive plate. A photograph is doing the same thing; capturing a slice of the generalized image field we call reality, albeit with a more limited amount of information than the holographic image. Holography and photography are only possible because of the generalized nature of the holographic information field that is present everywhere. Whereas a hologram is specifically made with laser light (which is coherent in its frequency and phase waveform), we perceive the generalized hologram of light every day through our eyes, brain and consciousness.
This next statement is one of the most important points to understand as it informs our entire perspec tive on the hologramic nature of the universe being explored in this book:
Perception only works because reality is hologramic.
My understanding of this began one balmy evening as I was driving to my home that was high up a mountain overlooking Santa Barbara, California. I stopped to take in the expansive beauty of the night sky — the stars and planets scintillating in the clarity of the moment. As I quietly gazed at them, marvel ing in the cosmic wonder of it all, I came to the realization that the image of every one of those pinpoint light sources was present at every point in space around me. Wherever I put my eye, the image of the whole night sky was there. !is would be true a foot away, a mile away or 100,000 miles off the surface of the planet. The image of the whole is present at every point; therefore, the entire field of light around us and throughout the cosmos must be holographic. We are inseparably living in a cosmic hologram!
This fundamental quality of wholeness is essential to the function of our visual and auditory perception. In fact, our perceptual framework is entirely dependent upon there being a generalized hologram ic information field. Let’s explore how this is so…
In the case of vision, the light field we’re immersed in is completely holographic. By definition, then, the image of the whole is present at every point within the light field, as in the night sky example. To under stand this in relation to your personal experience, visualize that the light that is reflecting off of every object around you and emanating from every light source in sight is ALL converging at EVERY point in the field of space surrounding you. As such, the image of the whole is present at each point. There is nowhere that this phenomenon of optical physics is not occurring. The entire field of light is holographic. It is because of this that we can see our surrounding reality as a seamless whole, with out gaps or voids in the image field. It is, by necessity, a relative image, being unique to our angle of perception based upon where we place our eyes in the field (otherwise there would be no relative reality), but it is an image of the whole nonetheless. Because of this, I propose a new postulate of holographic physics: The angle of incidence equals the angle of perception. The relative holographic image of the whole is entirely predicated upon your unique perspective!
“YOU” ARE EVERYWHERE
Here’s another way of seeing this relative to your own presence in the cosmos. Wherever you are reading this, take a look around yourself and notice the environment surrounding you. All objects — be they walls, ceiling, chairs, computer, people, trees, sky — are reflecting photons of light that are reaching your eye. As in the night sky example, every point in space contains an image of the whole environment. This means that at every point on the surface of your skin and clothes, the light that is illuminating you is doing so with an image of all that is surrounding you. Imagine a picture of your present environment imprinted into your skin at every point. This is literally what’s happening.
Conversely, your image is also present at every point in space. Photons of light reflect off of each point on your body in all outward directions. Imagine this: I can take a mirror and place it anywhere in the space around you and you will see your image reflected back. This means your image is everywhere. (See photograph on next page.) People around you can see you wherever they are in a line of sight. Even if they’re 50 miles away and have a strong enough telescope, they can see your whole image. When you step outside on a clear day, your image is literally filling all space around you, even out to the moon and beyond. Just as you are illuminated by photons reflected from all points in your environment, your environment is illuminated by photons reflected off of you. “You” are everywhere.
So, in each point in space surrounding you there is both an image of your total environment and an image of you; a complete image converging into every localized point in space, no matter how small a point you can conceive of.
Mirrors also only work the way they do because the light field is ho lographic. If it weren’t, when you looked in a mirror you would see gaps in the image where light information was missing. A mirror is not fully holographic, of course. It is more photographic, reflecting what appears as a 2D image. This is simply a “stepping down” of the perceptual framework into a more primary duality of actual and reflected objects. The actual object is the full holographic manifestation while the reflected object is a “slice” out of the holographic field into which the actual object’s image is projected (as photons of light reflecting off of the object in all directions). This photograph of Coco Chanel by Robert Doisneau shows how her image is holographically surrounding her as each mirror reflects a slightly different angle of view.
So our visual perception works the way it does because the light field is holographic. It simply would not work if it weren’t. Wherever we place our eyes, the generalized field of light is converging to a point at that location, providing us the holographic information of visual reality.
The same “image of the whole in every point” phenomenon also holds true for sound and our experi ence of acoustic reality. Sound waves converge from direct and refected sources at every point within the generalized sound field. The information of the whole soundscape is present at every point — reality is also holosonic. If it were not this way there would be gaps in the field where we could not hear certain sounds.
Together, the generalized field of light and sound that makes up the primary experience of our reality is what I call the Sonoluminous Holofield. Sono is sound, lumen is light, holo is whole, and field is generalized presence. The sonoluminous holofield is our everyday experience of reality. The information of the whole is present at every point. If it weren’t, you would experience places where the visual and acoustic felds would not be there, leaving visual and auditory gaps in your perceptual experience of reality.
Suffice it to say that shifting from a 2-D surface model to a 3-D (and even 4-D) generalized model offers a more accurate and whole concept of the hologramic nature of the cosmos. This principle of wholeness will be discussed further as we explore the rest of our model of cosmometry, especially as it relates to the hologramic nature of physical reality described in unified physics. For now, as we close this introduction to it, consider this question, especially in light of the current scientifc debate as to whether or not the cosmos is holographic:
Is it possible to make a holographic image in a non-holographic universe?
“The value of the hologram in this context is that it may help to bring this new notion of order to our attention in a sensibly perceptible way; but of course, the hologram is only an instrument whose function is to make a static record (or ‘snapshot’) of this order. The actual order itself which has thus been recorded is in the complex movement of electromagnetic fields, in the form of light waves. Such movement of light waves is present everywhere and in principle enfolds the entire universe of space (and time) in each region (as can be demonstrated in any such region by placing one’s eye or a telescope there, which will ‘unfold’ this content).” – David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
GO TO 3, 6, 14, 21, 40, 41, 65