Short description
Despite its apparent materiality, the universe is actually a kind of 3-D projection and is ultimately no more real than a hologram. Using this theory, the author presents his idea of reality. This includes not only reality as we know it, but also an explanation of paranormal phenomena.
Long description
Despite its apparent materiality, the universe is actually a kind of 3-D projection and is ultimately no more real than a hologram, a 3-D image projected in space and made with the aid of a laser. Using this model, a world-renowned physicist and a Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist has developed a new description of reality. It encompasses not only reality as we know it, including hitherto unexplained phenomena of physics, but is capable of explaining such occurrences as telepathy, paranormal and out-of-the-body experiences, "lucid" dreaming and even mystical and religious traditions such as cosmic unity and miraculous healings. In part one, the author explains in simple prose the theory behind a holograph and its traditional applications to science. In part two, he shows the panoramic way in which the holographic model makes sense of the entire range of mystical, spiritual and psychic experience. Finally, in part three, he explores the implications for other universes beyond our own.
Review
A veteran reporter on the New Age scene (Beyond the Quantum, 1986) ably explains the latest hip paradigm before soaring off into hyperdimensional inner space. Our world and its contents, suggests Talbot, are "only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time." Behind the breathy prose, he's talking about the universe as a hologram - that is, as a three-dimensional representation of a higher reality. Two men fathered this theory: Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist who claims that the brain functions holographically; and physicist David Bohm, who took the ball from Pribram and carried it right through the goal posts, describing the cosmos as a "holomovement," the "explicate" projection of an "implicated" reality. This implies, says Talbot, that the "objective universe. . . might not even exist." So far so good, if a bit gooey. But Talbot then goes on a pixilated hologram hunt, unearthing evidence for the new paradigm in telepathy, schizophrenia, synchronicity, the placebo effect, stigmata, acupuncture, psychokinesis, poltergeists, precognition, UFOs, psychic archaeology - and more. Without exception, the author takes a naive approach to these phenomena (for instance, near-death experiencers are "actually making visits to an entirely different level of reality"), evincing a sort of naive New Age Boy Scout eagerness that reaches its zenith when he talks about his own psychic adventures, like watching a "small brown object" materialize in his office. Fifty solid pages - then, like, far-out, man. (Kirkus Reviews)
Table of contents
- Part 1 A remarkable new view of reality: the brain as hologram
- the cosmos. Part 2 Mind and body: the holographic model and psychology
- I sing the body holographic
- a pocketful of miracles
- seeing holographically. Part 3 Space and time: time out of mind
- travelling in the superhologram
- return to the dreamtime.