The Holographic Universe Read Online Free PDF Page A

established between brain
cells, this is something of a puzzle. Pribram points out that the problem
becomes much more tractable if the brain were to convert all of its memories,
including memories of learned abilities such as writing, into a language of
interfering wave forms. Such a brain would be much more flexible and could
shift its stored information around with the same ease that a skilled pianist
transposes a song from one musical key to another.
    This same flexibility
may explain how we are able to recognize a familiar face regardless of the
angle from which we are viewing it Again, once the brain has memorized a face
(or any other object or scene) and converted it into a language of wave forms,
it can, in a sense, tumble this internal hologram around and examine it from
any perspective it wants.
    PHANTOM LIMB
SENSATIONS AND HOW WE CONSTRUCT A “WORLD-OUT-THERE”
    To most of us it is
obvious that our feelings of love, hunger, anger, and so on, are internal
realities, and the sound of an orchestra playing, the heat of the sun, the
smell of bread baking, and so on, are external realities. But it is not so
clear how our brains enable us to distinguish between the two. For example,
Pribram points out that when we look at a person, the image of the person is
really on the surface of our retinas. Yet we do not perceive the person as
being on our retinas. We perceive them as being in the “world-out-there.”
Similarly, when we stub our toe we experience the pain in our toe. But the pain
is not really in our toe. It is actually a neurophysiological process taking
place somewhere in our brain. How then is our brain able to take the multitude
of neurophysiological processes that manifest as our experience, all of which
are internal, and fool us into thinking that some are internal and some are
located beyond the confines of our gray matter?
    Creating the illusion
that things are located where they are not is the quintessential feature of a
hologram. As mentioned, if you look at a hologram it seems to have extension in
space, but if you pass your hand through it you will discover there is nothing
there. Despite what your senses tell you, no instrument will pick up the
presence of any abnormal energy or substance where the hologram appears to be
hovering. This is because a hologram is a virtual image, an image that
appears to be where it is not, and possesses no more extension in space than
does the three-dimensional image you see of yourself when you look in a mirror.
Just as the image in the mirror is located in the silvering on the mirror's
back surface, the actual location of a hologram is always in the photographic
emulsion on the surface of the film recording it.
    Further evidence that
the brain is able to Tool us into thinking that inner processes are located
outside the body comes from the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Georg von
Bekesy. In a series of experiments conducted in the late 1960s Bekesy placed
vibrators on the knees of blindfolded test subjects. Then he varied the rates
at which the instruments vibrated. By doing so he discovered that he could make
his test subjects experience the sensation that a point source of vibration was
jumping from one knee to the other. He found that he could even make his
subjects feel the point source of vibration in the space between their
knees. In short, he demonstrated that humans have the ability to seemingly
experience sensation in spatial locations where they have absolutely no sense
receptors.
    Pribram believes that
Bekesy's work is compatible with the holographic view and sheds additional
light on how interfering wave fronts—or in Bekesy's case, interfering sources
of physical vibration—enable the brain to localize some of its experiences
beyond the physical boundaries of the body. He feels this process might also
explain the phantom limb phenomenon, or the sensation experienced by some
amputees that a missing arm or leg is still present. Such individuals