The Brain and Universe as Hologram

Despite its enormous size and apparent materiality, the universe does not exist of itself. Indeed, hardly anybody is aware that the universe and everything within including ourselves ^a), is perpetually created and annihilated to and fro energy at the rate equal to the speed of light. The formation and dissipation of this wave-like material world across the surface of the vast ocean of energy create what we perceive as the passage of time.

In Bohm’s notion this dynamic phenomenon is called the unfoldment of the implicate order and enfoldment of the explicate order, like what implies in the hologram ^b). According to Bohm, the universe is like a kind of colossal dynamic hologram or holo-movement.

Our world and everything within is only shadows, mere projections from reality beyond our ordinary space and time. However, if it was so, how come that we perceive the world around us continuous and persisting over time? The simple answer is that nobody can see the discontinuity of time which interval is in the order of 10^-44second.

However, the argument does not stop there. The amazing thing is that nature seems to conform to the working of the human brain to that of the universe. Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University, discovered the brain works under the hologram mechanism. He found that memories were not localized at specific brain side but were somehow spread out throughout the brain as a whole. Every part of the brain contains all the information necessary to recall a whole memory, just like the hologram of which every small fragment of a piece of holographic film contains all the information recorded in the whole.

Pribram concluded that if the brain works following the holographic model then so does the universe. Even though Pribram and Bohm worked independently, they arrived at the same conclusion similar to what the mystics had said that the world around us was just an illusion. The universe and everything within existing only in a series of a fraction of seconds successively separated by gaps of nonexistence.

Both the brain and cosmos work at the same mechanism and rhythm which make human feel at home as they are unaware of experiencing such weird underlying reality.

Notes:

a.  What we mean here by oneself is the material body. Consciousness, information (knowledge) and intelligence are forms of more sophisticated energy which persist through time.

b.   Descartes who introduced coordinate systems to describe the order in physical process strongly influence our current concepts of order. The Cartesian grid and those of curvilinear coordinates essentially described a local order of separate points. The quantum realm, however, does not take this kind of local order and seems to have no significant order which Bohm called implicit or enfolded order. This kind of nonlocal order is what hologram does have.

References: 

1.  Talbot, M.: "The Holographic Universe", HarperPerennial, New York, 1992, p. 46-49

2.  Bohm, D. et al.: “The Undivided Universe”, Routledge, London, 1993, p. 374-380.

The Nothingness, Implicate Order and Non-locality

Most people wrongly perceive matter as an object existing in an empty space. Space is far from the vacuum; it is a plenum full of energy, the ground for all existence, inanimate, and animate beings.

Despite its apparent materiality and enormous size, this interface - the 3D-space and it's content (universe) - does not exist of itself a). Together with the matter it contains, space perpetually appears and disappears at the rate equal to the speed of light, creating a dynamic dimension that we call time.

In a more profound reality, we may describe this dynamic, temporary space as a front-wave propagating at the speed of light across an unimaginably vast ocean of high energy (Figure-1A). This front-wave perpetually rises and dissipates above and to the surface of the sea, manifesting respectively, using Bohm's terms, the unfoldment of the implicate order, and the enfoldment of the explicate order ^b).

It is only at this wave structure (unfolded order) that every materialized thing is localized. In this front-wave, the universe where we live, the local order implies. It's surrounding (enfolded order), in front and behind the wave and the vast ocean beneath it is non-local ^c). The surrounding of our universe, the enormous calm sea of energy we used to think as nothingness, is a real plenum. Nothingness, emptiness, vacuum, nonexistence ^d), or whatever you call it, is pure human imagination.

Bohm correctly stated that because the implicate order is the foundation giving birth to everything in the universe, it must contain every configuration of things that have been, and will be created, such as energy, information (knowledge), consciousness, intelligence, and life ^e).

But again, Bohm had no idea on how to describe these profound layering realities physically. He talked about super-implication by extending the notion of implicate order to quantum fields instead of particles ^f). The whole idea of implicate order could be reached in a natural way implying indefinitely higher levels of implicate order. To visualize the Bohm's view, we may enhance it by figuring out that each of those multi-layered implicates orders (energy, information, consciousness, intelligence, and life) is embedded one within another, in successively higher and higher dimensions (Figure-1B, C and D) ^g).

Notes:

a.   The 4-dimensional spacetime splits into two parts as the positive and negative energies segregating from each other. The energies' interaction creates particles at the interface of these opposite energies, the 3-dimensional [hyper] surface. This interaction occurs as the quantum fields generated by the opposing energies piercing through the interface igniting quantum sparks we perceive as particles.

b.    Bohm ¹ described the universe as a comparatively small pattern of excitation. It is a ripple on the infinite ocean of energy, a deeper order enfolded in the warp of reality. Bohm failed to elucidate his idea more explicitly through the geometrical description, i.e., the relative dimensionality of the ripple vis-a-vis that of the ocean of energy. His story of the universe in terms of implicate and explicate order was merely a metaphor. 

c.     Our classical notions of localized order imply in spacetime arise as limiting cases of the deeper implicate order. The manifest level of everyday experience and the quantum level underlying it emerges from a still deeper implicate level in which the classical Cartesian notions of form, order, and structure have more or less dissolved. Bohm believed that the implicate order would be more suitable for expressing the fundamental laws of nature than the explicate order, which is only a particular case of the general order.

d.    Nothingness in the sense of an absolute term in which it is devoid of matter as well as energy or anything else. 

e.   We may call all of the later (information, consciousness, intelligence, and life) energy but in different degrees of sophistication (dimensions).

f.      There is indeed no distinction between the fields and spacetime itself.

g.  The dimensions shown in the figure are relative. We should bear in mind that each of those individuals (energy, information, consciousness, intelligence, and life) may have different levels of existence and, those, the variety of their dimensions.

References: 

1.    Bohm, D. et al.: "The Undivided Universe," Routledge, London, 1993, p. 374-380.

2.    Talbot, M.: "The Holographic Universe," HarperPerennial, New York, 1992, p. 46-49

Quantum Annihilation and the Non-locality

The continuity of the passage of time we see in nature is not what it seems to be. It is more like the continuity of the pictures we see in the movie which are in reality the projection of a series of discrete pictures which gives us a perception of seeing events running continuously through time. While the pictures taken for the movie consisted of a series of two-dimensional images separated by gaps, those of the universe consist of a series of 10⁴⁴ snapshots of the whole three-dimensional space per second separated consecutively by a gap of nonexistence (Figure 1A).

The appearance of the space together with everything it contains is what we call the present time, promptly followed by its disappearance dissolving everything into nonexistence ^a) we call the past. This alternation of the existence – nonexistence is what we perceive as the passage of time ^b).  

Why does universe seem to be so over-designed in that the inclusion of a series of wasteful nonexistence is required? Far from being futile, this gap of nonexistence is strongly needed as the means to preserve the universe as a single whole regardless of the limitation of the light speed which in this case is not applicable.

Space together with everything within dissolves entirely in such a gap of non-existence. As the locality has no longer any meaning, the state of nonexistence manifests the undivided wholeness. All become united and entangled in which the implicate order of non-locality implies ^c).

The state of existence which is the unfoldment of the implicate order of non-locality manifests the explicate order of locality ^d). The perpetual creation and annihilation, therefore, fashions alternately the locality and non-locality orders (Figure-1B). These succeeding unfoldment of the implicate and enfoldment of the explicate orders take place at the rate equal to the speed of light. Alas, David Bohm¹ who first proposed the theory of the implicate order did not elaborate it to this direction, which makes people consider his theory as a mere metaphor.  

The gross sum of contributions of those explicit-implicit orders or local-nonlocal orders ^e) is mathematically described by what is called the wavefunction. As the quantum measurement can only gauge [the snapshot of] the explicate order, and not the complete series of the implicate-explicate orders, it gives us a perception as though the act of measurement collapses the wavefunction.

The perpetual successive transformation of the local and non-local orders which is not in point-to-point correspondence makes the quantum probabilistic mechanism seem to take over the classical deterministic mechanism. 

Notes:

 

a.  In the state of nonexistence, everything dissolves into energy in which space and time has no meaning. It signifies that in such nonexistence the non-local order implies.

b.  It implies that there is no such [material] thing persists in nature. Everything "within" space perpetually appears and disappears "through" time, except the energy which alone persists. The persistence of matter and space are just an illusion.

c.  The enfolded order which applies within such a non-local unbroken wholeness is what David Bohm called the implicate order, taking the analogy of the "order" produced in a hologram where each of its regions makes possible an image of the whole object. Rather than being in point-to-point correspondence, the whole object is enfolded in each part of the universe.

d. As what is usually described using a Cartesian grid or its extension of curvilinear coordinates. Locality fits comfortably within the space structure which is mathematically described by a differential manifold.

e. Mostly all the laws of motion in quantum mechanics correspond to enfoldment and unfoldment. Bohm ¹ put forward that the relation between the wave function at one time and its form in another time is determined by the propagator or the Green's function. The region near a point in space enfolds contribution from all over space at other times and vice-versa in which the Green's function is taken as the weighting factor.

References:

1.      Bohm, D. et al.: "The Undivided Universe," Routledge, London, 1993, p. 350-355.

2.      Talbot, M.: "The Holographic Universe," HarperPerennial, New York, 1992, p. 46-4