Re-reading this article about how the universe is a hologram made me remember some things I meant to write about a while back, but which my holographic mind had never gotten around to doing. If you’ve never heard about this theory, go and start with this article, and also check out Michael Talbot’s book, Holographic Universe. Frankly, I think the book is not that good, and all the best ideas are really encapsulated in this article. But to each his own, I guess.

At the heart of the theory though, as I understand it, is that the universe consists of a hologram. And by that they mean that everything is fundamentally interconnected to and contained within everything else. The idea being that if you cut a piece of holographic film, each of the ensuing fragments still contains the entire image. Same thing happens if you cut it into smaller pieces also. Physicist David Bohm was the first to promote the idea that the same thing occurs in the nature of the universe.

I’ve not seen a really good concise definition of them online yet, but he popularized the notion that this totality, this union of everything at some basic level is an “implicate order.” That is, everything is folded within this order. From the implicate order comes the world we experience, of separated compartmentalized entities: the explicate order, that which has been folded out for us. Generally, people talk about this as being similar to the Hindu concept of maya, that the world as we experience it is an illusion, that this separation is an illusion, that everything is ultimately united in the godhead. The Hindu concept of Indra’s net is also very close to the holographic universe. It is a mythological web over the god Indra’s palace, with jewels at each intersection of the web. Reflected in each jewel is every other jewel - the whole is contained within the parts.

The implicate/explicate order reminds me of a couple other things also. One is the oft-repeated question - I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a zen koan, or what - “If a tree falls in the forest and noone’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?” This calls into question whether or how much events rely on the experience of an observer.

I think an even more concrete example of for me, as a web developer, is found by looking at web server technology. When you are browsing the web there are (at least) two concurrent levels of interpretation happening. The web server, the computers which store websites, all these computers do is store commands - code. They don’t actually store websites. When a person comes in to “surf” these web pages, the commands lying dormant on the web server are activated and sent to a browser. The browser then interprets these commands into the web pages you see when you open up Firefox (or Intenet Explorer - if you’re a caveman). So according to this much easier to grasp analogy, the commands stored on the web server are the implicate order, and the pages viewed in your browser are the explicate order.

Perhaps a better zen koan would then be, “If a web server doesn’t receive a request from a web browser, does it make a web page?” The answer here is much easier to determine. It definitely does not. Web sites don’t exist when people aren’t looking at them. Mmm… unless they are being spidered or indexed, in which case the code is being indexed though, rather than the page as you’d see it in a browser. Another good example is vector graphics, which is the kind that are created by programs like Adobe Illustrator. In vector graphics file formats, the actual graphics are not stored when you save a file. What is save is the mathematical formulae which are much smaller and which can be used to recreate the graphics.

The fun part of this line of reasoning is that it can easily lead you into solipsism, the belief that nothing really exists outside of you, outside of your own mind. Because it is your experience (your web browser) which calls everything into existence from the underlying stored commands of the implicate order. It’s the idea that I’m dreaming you, or you’re dreaming me. A lot of philosophically minded people find solipsism to be the height of delusion, but I think it actually fits really nicely into the holographic principle of the universe. Solipsists say: “I am the only mind which exists,” but if we are all connected to and contained within one another, then we are all right. When you say “my mind” and “my experience” and when I say those terms, we are both pointing towards fundamentally the same underlying implicate order of mind - the monadic godhead, Brahman.

In the Vedantic (and subsequently Yogic) schools of Hinduism, Brahman is the signifying name given to the concept of the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality that is the Divine Ground of all being. It is regarded as the source and sum of the cosmos, that constricted by time, space, and causation, as pure being, the “world soul.” Thus, it was deemed a singular substrate from which all that is arises

Hinduism actually deals with this range of thought at great length, and did so many thousands of years before modern quantum physics began pointing towards much the same conclusions. Of special interest to me has always been bhakti yoga which essentially states that since the divine takes any and all shapes, then one can worship god in virtually any form through selfless love and devotion. Some even say that Jesus taught a form of bhakti yoga.

Jesus taught that everyone should love God with their whole heart and mind, which is the quintessence of bhakti-yoga. Bhakti means devotion and surrender to God. As stated in Matthew (22.36-40): “Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? He answered, Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the Law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments.” These two rules are the heart of the processes of bhakti…

In this pasage, you might be able to say that “God” is the totality, the implicate order, and “your neighbor” is the explicate order. And he also mentions the self, which is essentially the transformer between the two orders of existence. For in the holographic view of the universe, the mind itself functions as a hologram, storing information non-locally and cross-referencing everything billions of times over.

For more in this vein, also check out these older posts:

1. Brain as reducing valve
2. Reducing things with words
3. Dreams & Bell’s Theorem

Also check out these outside links for further research:

1. David Bohm on TWM
2. David Bohm - Two Kinds of Order
3. Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds
4. David Bohm and the Implicate Order
5. How web servers work
6. How web pages work