The Holographic Universe

I recently finished reading a book by Michael Talbot titled The Holographic Universe first published in 1991. In simple terms the idea is based on quantum physics and delves into the idea that "there is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it - from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons - are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time. "

"The main architects of this astonishing idea are two of the world's most eminent thinkers: University of London physicist David Bohm, a protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists: and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and author of the classic neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain."

"Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts", as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle." It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet"

"Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction."

The book goes on to talk about consciousness in everything, the collective consciousness, how the holographic universe explains out-of-body and near-death experiences and much more.

Its a fascinating read.