The Holographic Universe
What if everything we thought we knew about reality is about to be transformed?
What if, instead of viewing consciousness as something we have and experiencing it at different levels of self-awareness; that we come to understand that consciousness is what we and the whole world are?
What if mind literally is matter and the perceived duality of our Universe, as ancient wisdom has told us, is merely its appearance and not its fundamental nature?
What if we as a species no longer need to hope, trust and have faith in such a possibility, but come to understand, experience and embody its fundamental truth?
What if science finally catches up with universal spiritual explorations in consciousness to at last provide scientifically-based evidence of the unified nature of the whole world?
What if we’re about to be presented with ever more compelling confirmation that we’re microcosmic co-creators of the unfolding intelligence of our Universe, that exists and is evolving as a coherent entity; a finite thought-form in the infinity of cosmic mind?
We are.
Such a 21st century scientific revolution is underway. Its revelations will radically affect not only our view of the Universe at its smallest and largest scales but every level in between and crucially for our everyday lives.
Its rapidly increasing evidence across many fields of research from physics to biology, complex systems research, social studies and information theory is reconciling with spiritual experiences and the numerous reports of supernormal phenomena such as telepathy and remote viewing.
It will transform our notions of physical reality. Instead of the apparent duality of the manifest world, its emergent vision is disclosing a deeper understanding of reality as being innately unified
Physicists know when drilling down to sub-atomic scales that matter is extremely ephemeral; its will of the wisp nature showing our Universe is 99.999999999999% no-thingness. And even then, its seeming materiality only exists as the inter-play of mere excitations arising from deeper, non-physical realities.
They also know that, whilst within space and time, no signal can go faster than the speed of light, quantum mechanics can only work if the whole Universe is interconnected as a single entity. Such nonlocal coherence has now been experimentally proven in laboratories far beyond quantum scales and astronomically for distances of 600 light years from Earth.
Still though, our everyday experience of the apparent solidity of the physical world and the seeming separations between large-scale objects has meant that such a deeper understanding has looked to have little relevance for most of us.
This is about to change!
In 2012 an experiment led by physicists Antoine Bérut and Eric Lutz demonstrated that when a digital bit of information is deleted, actual physical heat is released and in line with theoretical predictions.
Building on an insight by communications expert Claude Shannon that the entropy of a system, previously considered as its level of order and disorder, is better understood as being the measure of its information content, the experiment proved the links between information and physical concepts of heat, work and entropy.
From these and other discoveries, extraordinary though it might seem, an increasing number of physicists are coming to consider that the digitised information, that’s the basis for all our technologies, is exactly the same as universal information, also expressed digitally, that underpins and pervades all physical reality. Our leading edge virtual realities and holograms are kid’s toys for which the appearance of our Universe is the master class.
Information is coming to be scientifically viewed as being more fundamental than energy, matter, space and time and as the most basic ‘stuff’ of physical-ised reality.
Furthermore, studies of black holes show that information describing their physical properties, their so-called informational entropy, isn’t proportional to their three-dimensional volumes. Instead and acting exactly like a hologram, it varies in relation to their two-dimensional spherical surface areas, or event horizons.
If we imagine such event horizons to be covered in tiny triangles at the so-called Planck scale, which in terms of length and time is the tiniest unit of measurement and that naturally arises when the forces of our Universe are combined, every miniscule Planck area stores one bit of information at this fundamental pixelation of space-time.
Extending this insight to our entire Universe, as the so-called holographic principle, then shows that physical reality isn’t just inherently informed but holographically realised.
In bringing together these two profound perceptions of an informed and holographic Universe; literally as a cosmic hologram, scientists are beginning to restate and expand the laws of physics as informational algorithms. Just like those that instruct our computers to operate, but now being understood as instructing our entire Universe and manifesting all we experience as reality itself.
The latest cosmological evidence points strongly to our Universe being finite; born 13.8 billion years ago not with a chaotic big bang, but in an exquisitely ordered and finely-tuned Big Breath and as what’s called a closed system. From these and other discoveries and insights it’s becoming ever clearer that energy-matter and space-time are phenomena that emerge from and which are complementary expressions of universal information.
By expanding the two laws of thermodynamics designated by Ludwig Boltzmann in the 19th century to describe the behavior of gases as laws of information and recognising that quantum and relativity theories deal respectively with the existence of energy-matter and the evolution of space-time, the resultant laws of information, or infodynamics, naturally reconciles these two pillars of 20th century science; showing exactly how our Universe exists and evolves as a finite and unified entity within an infinite and eternal Cosmos.
Scientists across many fields of research and investigating numerous scales of existence are discovering the signature of the cosmic hologram; not as random data but patterned and relational in-formation; giving form to the appearance of the physical world.
Crucially, such evidence is being discovered not just throughout the so-called natural world but as all-pervasive in our collective human behaviours.
For instance, in 2010 physicist Ali Yazdani and his colleagues found that geometric in-formational patterns termed fractals guide physical transitions at the atomic level; the same patterns that in 2012 astronomer Morag Scrimgeour and her team found also guide the structures of galactic clusters up to huge scales of around 330 million light years across.
Astrophysicists Henry Lin and Abraham Loeb at Harvard have tracked how cities grow in the same in-formational ways that galaxies evolve.
Many researchers are discovering how dynamic in-formational forms pervade ecosystems and guide and pre-dispose evolutionary processes; seeing how they’re identical to the in-formational structures of the Internet and our complex social behaviours.
Researchers have even uncovered how the in-formational relationships that link the relative frequencies and destructive powers of earthquakes are the same as those that plot the occurrences and scales of fatalities of human conflicts.
This wholeworld-view of unified reality and with ourselves as microcosmic co-creators naturally aligns with and attunes to spiritual practices and conscious living.
By recognising that all we call reality is in-formational and essentially the wholeness of consciousness exploring and experiencing itself on many levels of existence, every principle of co-creativity in which we engage, whether consciously or subconsciously, follows the same rules of informational physics through which the manifest reality of the cosmic hologram is expressed in our Universe.
An octave of eight such codes of co-creative perception, gleaned from insights of many spiritual traditions and my own researches and experiences over many years, correlate with such informational precepts.
These are the principles of relativity, resolution, resonance, reflection, change, choice and consequence, conservation, and concession.
1.
The principle of relativity expresses the truism of John Donne’s poem that “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Everything in our Universe, from the fundamental relativity of space-time and the interweaving patterns of energy-matter, exists and is mediated through the polarities of real-ationships. All our experiences too are played out through encounters with different aspects of ourselves, our interfaces with others and with the wider world. Indeed, it’s through the myriad interplays of such relativities that our entire perception is informed.
2.
Donne’s poem goes on to state that instead of apparent separation, “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” So, in transcending such relativities, the principle of resolution expresses their attained reconciliation, balance, and ultimate integration (or “into-greation”), where our illusory perception of duality is progressively re-soulved into an awareness of the unity of consciousness.
3.
The harmonic and coherent relationships that pervade our Universe and that are the signature of the cosmic hologram manifest through the principle of resonance, which we individually and collectively embody on physical, emotional, and mental levels. We’re “on the same wavelength” with people we like, or something “chimes” with us. Conversely when we’re dissonant, we’re literally out of tune.
Our well-being derives from our being in resonant and harmonious relationships of all types. Experiments have shown that when we live in dissonant states of chronic fear or anxiety, the continuing level of disharmony and stress negatively affects our mental, emotional, and physical health, weakening our immune system and causing dis-ease. When, though, we’re positively in tune with our surroundings and circumstances, our benevolent feelings and sense of greater connection are also embodied in better physical health. As our awareness expands we become ever more consciously connected and progressively resonate with the wholeness of the Cosmos.
4.
The principle of reflection essentially extends the rule of resonance, describing how the outer circumstances of our lives are reflected inwardly by our mental, emotional, and eventually physical states. When we’re able to consciously reflect on such mirroring, we’re then more able to recognize and amend any distortions such reflection embeds.
5.
All physical processes incorporate inevitable change through the inexorable flow of time; nothing stays the same. This principle of change when applied to our human circumstances calls us to embrace and learn the lessons of our experiences. As the Buddha noted, some of the greatest suffering we undergo in life is when our attachment to something or someone causes us to cling to situations, often until the pain of such holding on is greater than the real or imagined hurt of letting go.
6.
We’ve seen how causes and effects play out ubiquitously through space-time Again, when this universal rule is applied to ourselves, the principle of choice and consequence takes on a deeper perspective, encouraging us to empower ourselves by taking responsibility for all our decisions. While clearly there are challenging situations in our lives that our human selves didn’t consciously choose, nonetheless, we always have a choice in how to respond. Perhaps no one explained this truism more fundamentally than psychologist Viktor Frankl. Interred with other family members in concentration camps of the Holocaust and the only one to survive them, he later wrote that in every circumstance, even the horrendous ones he lived through, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
7.
The principle of conservation when applied to consciousness emphasises the overall ebb and flow, give and take of life and is an extension of the conservation of energy. As for ebbs, flows, gives, takes, and cycles of energy, where energies change their forms but are ultimately conserved, this principle correlates to the ancient concept of karma. Significantly, though, it broadens its often-narrow tit-for-tat interpretation to nonjudgmentally encompass the entirety of our co-creative experiences on all levels of our consciousness.
8.
The last of the octave is that of the principle of concession, which encourages us to recognise the underlying meaning and purpose of our life experiences and circumstances, to acknowledge responsibility for our choices, accept the appropriateness of what flows from them, and to learn and grow accordingly. Such concession is expressed by ho’pononpono, the ancient Hawaiian practice of forgiveness and reconciliation traditionally used to resolve family and tribal conflicts. Through a process of individual and collective acknowledgment of fault and recognition of responsibility, its prayer, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you” enables the resolution, healing, and release of intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict.
As awareness of the unity of consciousness grows, the realization by the prayer of ho’pononpono that at some level of consciousness, each of us is a co-creator of the entirety of our reality and so ultimately responsible for its outcome, thus expands to encompass our entire Universe.
What if we begin to understand, experience and ultimately embody the unified reality of the cosmic hologram, and so are empowered to live more and more consciously in harmony with its inherent oneness and evolutionary impulse of ever-greater self-awareness?
What if we can acknowledge that it has been the limitations of our duality-based perceptions which have primarily driven the conflicts, inequalities and exclusions of our fear-based behaviours?
What if, instead of continuing to fall into fear, we can come together to leap into love?
What if by re-membering who we really are and knowing rather than hoping that we’re microcosmic co-creators empowers us to celebrate both our individual uniqueness and collective diversity and harness our communal wisdom to transform our current global emergency into the emergence of our conscious evolution?
What then?
