Read The Holographic Universe for Free Online

rapidity with which we
learn many complex physical tasks. For instance, we do not learn to ride a
bicycle by painstakingly memorizing every tiny feature of the process. We learn
by grasping the whole flowing movement. The fluid wholeness that typifies how
we learn so many physical activities is difficult to explain if our brains are
storing information ia a bit-by-bit manner. But it becomes much easier to
understand if the brain is Fourier-analyzing such tasks and absorbing them as a
whole.
    The Reaction of
the Scientific Community
    Despite such evidence,
Pribram's holographic model remains extremely controversial. Part of the
problem is that there are many popular theories of how the brain works and
there is evidence to support them all. Some researchers believe the distributed
nature of memory can be explained by the ebb and flow of various brain
chemicals. Others hold that electrical fluctuations among large groups of
neurons can account for memory and learning. Each school of thought has its
ardent supporters, and it is probably safe to say that most scientists remain
unpersuaded by Pribram's arguments. For example, neuropsychologist Frank Wood
of the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, feels
that “there are precious few experimental findings for which holography is the
necessary, or even preferable, explanation.” Pribram is puzzled by statements
such as Wood's and counters by noting that he currently has a book in press
with well over 500 references to such data.
    Other researchers agree
with Pribram. Dr. Larry Dossey, former chief of staff at Medical City Dallas
Hospital, admits that Pribram's theory challenges many long-held assumptions
about the brain, but points out that “many specialists in brain function are
attracted to the idea, if for no other reason than the glaring inadequacies of
the present orthodox views.”
    Neurologist Richard
Restak, author of the PBS series The Brain , shares Dossey's opinion. He
notes that in spite of overwhelming evidence that human abilities are
holistically dispersed throughout the brain, most researchers continue to cling
to the idea that function can be located in the brain in the same way that
cities can be located on a map. Restak believes that theories based on this
premise are not only “oversimplistic,” but actually function as “conceptual
straitiackets” that keep us from recognizing the brain's true complexities. He
feels that “a hologram is not only possible but, at this moment, represents
probably our best ‘model’ for brain functioning.”
    Pribram
Encounters Bohm
    As for Pribram, by the
1970s enough evidence had accumulated to convince him his theory was correct.
In addition, he had taken his ideas into the laboratory and discovered that
single neurons in the motor cortex respond selectively to a limited bandwidth
of frequencies, a finding that further supported his conclusions. The question
that began to bother him was, If the picture of reality in our brains is not a
picture at all but a hologram, what is it a hologram of? The dilemma posed by
this question is analogous to taking a Polaroid picture of a group of people
sitting around a table and, after the picture develops, finding that, instead
of people, there are only blurry clouds of interference patterns positioned
around the table. In both cases one could rightfully ask, Which is the true
reality, the seemingly objective world experienced by the observer/photographer
or the blur of interference patterns recorded by the camera/brain?
    Pribram realized that if
the holographic brain model was taken to its logical conclusions, it opened the
door on the possibility that objective reality—the world of coffee cups,
mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps—might not even exist, or at least
not exist in the way we believe it exists. Was it possible, he wondered, that
what the mystics had been saying for centuries was true, reality was maya ,
an illusion, and what was