Muddled pop mysticism ( )

In the tube video named 'Linda Moulton Howe - Is Our Universe Someone Else's Computer Simulation? at Ozark Mountain Publishing' Linda shares that Talbot was an UFO-abductee who downloaded the segments of the book from his abductor.

This book is a tour-de-force of information on the cutting edge of research in quantum physics, neurology, parapsychology, psychology, and new age spirituality. There is information on OBEs (Out of Body Experiences), NDEs (Near Death Experiences), miracles, psychic healing, remote viewing, telepathy, telekinesis, and more. This book is not mere speculation, it contains over a 1000 detailed footnotes to books, scientific journals, and even private correspondences with the various researchers. The author's thesis is in the title to the book. But the implications of his thesis are truly mind-blowing. I can not do it justice with a summary here.

On a personal note, it has taken me many many months to get through this book. It is not because the book is long, it is only 300 pages. It was not because the book is filled with impenetrable or arcane knowledge; for the most part, I was familiar with the material presented. I did find it annoying that the author's vocabulary exceeded my own, causing me to, far too frequently, to pause and ponder the meaning of some unfamiliar terms. While I was reading this, I took a "break" and read a 500 page SciFi novel, among several other books.

The reason I found this book so hard to get through is simply the fact that my mind was resisting the truth the author was exposing. I would read a chapter, figuratively shake my head, and put the book down so I could mentally process what the author was saying. When I temporarily recovered from having my worldview destroyed, I would pick the book back up and undergo the process again with the next chapter. My (ego) mind did not want to accept the author's view of reality, in spite of his encyclopedic breadth of knowledge and his well documented, decades worth of research to come to the conclusions that he has reached. This is an advanced book for the truth seeker. Well worth a read if you are ready for it. ( )

Some say there exists only one interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that is the many-worlds interpretation. But there exists another explanation as described by Michael Talbot in his book “Holographic Universe”; here is an excerpt where he writes of Karl Pribram a neurophysiologist at Stanford:

'... Pribam realised that the objective world does not exist, at least not in the way we are accustomed to believing. What is 'out there' is a vast ocean of waves and frequencies and reality looks concrete to us only because our brains are able to take this holographic blur and convert it into sticks and stones and other familiar objects that make up our world...'

'...In other words, the smoothness of a piece of fine china and the feel of beach sand beneath our feet are really just elaborate versions of the phantom limb syndrome (when amputees 'feel' a limb long after it has been removed)..'

'According to Pribram, this does not mean there aren't china cups and grains of sand out there. It simply means that a china cup has two very different aspects to its reality. When it is filtered through the lens of our brains it manifests as a cup. But if we could get rid of our lenses, we'd experience it as an interference pattern. Which is real and which is illusion? "Both are real to me," says Pribham, "or, if you want to say, neither of them are real".

Also look up the research by Russian biophysicist Pjotr Garjajev, and his colleagues known as the phantom DNA effect. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light, on screen, a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself.

Also see their work known as wave genetics, they found that living DNA will always react to language-modulated laser rays, and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are used. They succeeded in repairing chromosomes damaged by X-rays, they even captured information patterns of a particular DNA and transmitted it onto another, so reprogramming cells to another genome. They successfully transformed for example, frog embryos to salamander embryos simply by transmitting the DNA information patterns. This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects involved when western researchers cut out and insert DNA.

If you fall into a black hole, nothing happens to you, by the equivalence principle you cannot know you are falling into a black hole. You carry on happy as Larry. To us outside, looking at you falling into a black hole, you slow down, your time seen by us gets slower and slower and slower and you never fall into the hole. You get stuck at the horizon. (look at the Penrose diagram, the event horizon can never be in an outside observer's past) But, eons later, you come back out by hawking radiation and say hi! I was in a black hole! We say, no you weren't; you got close then you were radiated back out. Who's right? Smeared over the surface, or inside, it's the same, it's just your point of view. As a member of the general public that is exactly how I feel now. I feel smeared! There are too many theories describing the universe and many of them seem to be correct. There is still no universal equation combining all four forces. Is the physics we know correct, or is it only sufficient approximation to satisfy our senses? Will our intelligence ever allow us to understand it or are we just fooking dumb? We do not have a vantage point to be objective on that matter. Cosmic man. But whoosh. I'm blown away that there are people who genuinely understand this Holographic and Black Hole stuff. Respect. ( )

I've only rated this book a three for the moment because it bears a definite re-reading.

When I first read it many years ago, I seem to recall being blown away by the idea of every bit of ourselves, every bit of information, every memory and every event being stored somewhere in the micro-material of this universe, which is contained within one or more other universes, and which also itself/ourselves contain one or more parallel universes -unseen, but existing and colliding and sometimes even destroying each other or simply ending, even resulting in the creation of other universes.
Actually this inspired the basis for my first practice novel titled Creator: Friend or Foe, which is in My Reading section here on GR if you wish to torture yourself with it -several of my friends say they really liked it! ( )

I've only rated this book a three for the moment because it bears a definite re-reading.

When I first read it many years ago, I seem to recall being blown away by the idea of every bit of ourselves, every bit of information, every memory and every event being stored somewhere in the micro-material of this universe, which is contained within one or more other universes, and which also itself/ourselves contain one or more parallel universes -unseen, but existing and colliding and sometimes even destroying each other or simply ending, even resulting in the creation of other universes.
Actually this inspired the basis for my first practice novel titled Creator: Friend or Foe, which is in My Reading section here on GR if you wish to torture yourself with it -several of my friends say they really liked it! ( )

This book was a huge disappointment to me, and a rare instance of a book I did not finish. It dates from 1991, so I expected it not to represent the latest thinking on the subject; but I'm afraid that I found it increasingly rejecting any sort of serious science from about a third of the way in.

The idea of the holographic universe - that what we experience as 'reality' is actually a consensual illusion that we construct on a minute-by-minute basis - is a controversial idea for which there continues to be evidence found and new interpretations offered. So far, so good. And the idea is sufficiently strange that it might indeed explain much that is currently unexplainable. Talbot starts off reasonably well, outlining the careers of David Bohm (a physicist) and Karl Pribram (a neurophysiologist) and their thinking on the question of the nature of physical reality. These first chapters are fairly sound (though it has to be said that an internet search does not turn up much on either scientist that could be considered controversial).

After which, Talbot begins to look at "the brain as hologram", taking as a starting point the fact that our senses are interpreted only within the brain and what we think of as an external reality is actually an internal construction. Again, so far, so good; and the arguments are backed up with what appears to be reasonable expositions of the work of published scientists.

But as the book progresses, the discussion veers further away from science and down the path of anecdote. Michael Talbot has written a number of works on psychic experiences, and he dips more and more into that territory than into verifiable or reasoned scientific discussion. Any further discussion on cosmological matters disappears and we concentrate entirely on psychology and (increasingly) parapsychology. When we got onto regression into past lives, auras and chakras, my patience began to give out. And from about half-way through the book, the style turned into pure Readers' Digest and Talbot began to cite his own psychic experiences. At which point, I gave up, exasperated.

The concept of the holographic universe is important and fascinating. This book should not be your entry point to discussion of the subject. ( )

I know intellectually that quantum physics is the domain of some of the strangest phenomena imaginable. I know it may be possible to create a sub-atomic particle merely by searching for it, and that two particles separated by many miles can apparently influence each others behavior in ways that suggest either faster-than-light interaction or that the apparent separation between them is not real. I have read that space as we know it may be illusory, that time as a linear process may also be an illusion. All of these things fascinate me, and books like 'The Dancing Wu-Li Masters,' The Tao of Physics,' and 'The Holographic Universe' by Michael Talbot feed that fascination. These works are challenging, exciting and, by their extraordinary nature, suspect.

We know this era as one of hard-edged rationalism, linear thinking and cynicism. These traits are normal and easy to share because they are so prevalent, and because, really, no socially-engaged human wants to be regarded as a 'loon' (per another reviewer's dismissive remarks). So on one hand, my responsibility as a modern rational human is to dismiss the ideas of writers like Talbot, who take cutting edge physics as a point of departure and spin it into parallel universes, telepathic and clairvoyant explanations, and into all manner of strange and wonderful possibilities. Like other similar books, 'The Holographic Universe' suggests that mysticism and spirituality may provide useful metaphors for phenomena that scientific investigation is only beginning to sense the existence of . . . and will quite probably experience difficulty describing objectively. Predictably, these suggestions remain largely ignored by mainstream science. It is not comfortable or productive for a professional to publicly hold them.

But on the other hand, there is something both intriguing and intuitively truthful about the idea that mind may determine its reality. Talbot's observations about the way in which quantum particles appear to behave according to how the observer thinks about them certainly provokes some thought. Such 'quantum entanglement' has apparently been observed on the molecular level , as well. Is it possible that perception and creation are two sides of one coin? Are we so in charge of our world that it is exactly as we have judged? Perhaps our thinking is too 'hard' at times. Perhaps James Randi's skeptical challenge to 'prove it,' in fact insures the very outcome that he expects. I wonder.
There is in cosmology a kind of dividing line, which separates individuals by the way they choose to think about reality. Either 1) we populate a mechanistic universe in which consciousness has arisen out of the chaos of matter, or 2) the universe as we know it is a property of mind, and matter has arisen from consciousness. So . . . which of these is the fundamental property of reality? Unfortunately, it seems unprovable, one way or the other. As an adult, I have tended to oscillate back and forth on that question.

So, in order to accept the possibility of alternate dimensions, 'higher realms,' or the validity of near-death experiences, a rational thinker must make a decision to accept an argument which is based on circumstantial evidence. That kind of argument is the real stock-in-trade of 'The Holographic Universe,' if not most calls for acceptance of the numinous. Talbot cites volumes of near-death accounts in which the experiencer corroborates exact operating room procedures; countless telepathic and clairvoyant 'coincidences'; accounts of past-lives remembered under hypnosis in which buildings and geographical layouts are later supported by visits to actual locations. Investigating the sheer volume of notes and references Talbot cites causes that evidence to become weighty indeed. But is it sufficient?

Finally, one must decide for oneself. And continue the search. Good luck! ( )

A MUST READ! ( )

Well written, but pure nonsense. ( )

Pure loon drivel. I hope I gave it to the ex or her parents (who take this stuff seriously) on separation. ( )

This must be one of the most fascinating, if not the most fascinating book I have ever read, and it is a must-read for anyone who is even remotely curious about who and what we really are or who wants to see spirituality meeting science. The claims that are made are backed up by numerous scientific studies, but it doesn't blow you away with scientific jargon. It's written in an easy-to-read style and the different chapters are split up into subsections, which also helps. Michael Talbot explains what a hologram is and then goes on to argue that the holographic model can be used to explain multiple personality disorders (extraordinary! - if you know nothing about MPD, then you absolutely must read this section), psychokinesis, miracles, the human energy field (or energy bodies), past/present/future existing seemlessly together, near death experiences (NDEs), UFO sightings and much more. Whether you accept the holographic theory or not, just reading the results of the various scientific studies mentioned in the book is fascinating and for me, personally, as a poet and author, it was also inspiring. The idea that everything is interconnected in this holographic universe of ours and is part of the same continuum inspired me, for example, to write a poem called 'My Life' to try and make sense of it ('...all that I see and don't see, hear and don't hear, touch and don't touch, smell and don't smell, taste and don't taste I am - I am the eternal energy of everything...'), whilst the story of the woman in the NDE chapter who said that 'she hadn't danced enough yet', making the being of light she was talking to laugh heartily and enabling her to return to physical life, gave me an idea for a children's story. In short, I found the book riveting and inspirational - jam-packed full of extraordinary scientific fact way more mind-blowing and thrilling than any science fiction I've ever read - and I am now reading it for a second time and will probably read it a third and fourth time as well! ( )

Think you know what reality is? Think again. If you have ever questioned the power of the mind and that relationship to reality, this is a must read. ( )

One of my favorite physics books, I first read this in a period of time when I was (for whatever reason!) interested in shamans and altered states of reality. I've read it since then, and it is still as good as I remember it. It just goes to show that some very serious people think the Universe is stranger than we sometimes make it out to be. And with recent reports of tangled photons and spooky action at a distance, who knows what will actually will turn out to be the case.. ( )

This is a fascinating and frustrating book. The author has some genuinely interesting ideas about the nature of reality. On the other hand, there is also a great deal of weird paranormal stuff, including a passage about how the author was able to conjure cold spaghetti out of thin air, that almost made me throw the book away. The book is still worth reading, though, because of its many interesting ideas and insights - just read it with a grain of salt. ( )

Well-written, comprehensive overview of metaphysics. I hadn't read much about Stanislav Grof until this book, and Talbot's description of Grof's work prompted me to read Grof's book, "The Holotropic Mind." Consciousness appears to be not only located in our mind, but is connected throughout the universe. ( )

According to The Holographic Universe, a hologram is a good analogy to reality. It is composed of frequency patterns, and every part contains a representation of the whole image. Energy is fundamental and matter is a manifestation. Our concepts are abstractions of pieces of what is underneath a unified whole connected with no concept of space or time. The hologram analogy has many similarities to the vision of reality of earlier civilizations which we treat now as mystical or mythical. (A hologram is a three-dimensional image in the form of interference patterns. Each part of it represents the whole image, albeit with less resolution.)

Part 1: A Remarkable New View of Reality.

1. The Brain as Hologram
Rats retained memories no matter what portion of their brains were cut out. Some researchers concluded that a memory is not localized in one spot. Like a hologram every part of the brain contains enough information to retain memories.

Vision is not localized either. Neuron messages radiate creating interference patterns. Transferring a skill, for example making words with your left elbow, is easy because it’s like viewing the image from another angle. The brain responds not to a visual pattern but to the Fourier transform of that pattern which is the frequency domain, like a hologram. Perhaps the brain Fourier analyzes tasks to pick them up as a whole, as for example bike riding, rather than learning bit by bit. “Was it possible, he wondered, that what the mystics had been saying for centuries was true, reality was maya, an illusion, and what was out there was really a vast, resonating symphony of wave forms, a ‘frequency domain’ that was transformed into the world as we know it only after it entered our senses?”

2. The Cosmos as Hologram
Nonlocality, effects at speeds greater than the speed of light, are proven in quantum mechanics. David Bohm, physicist, explains that there is a connection that we don’t perceive between the distant entities. Ink in a jar of glycerine can be twirled to disappear but twirled the other way to reappear. “Bohm calls this deeper level of reality the implicate (which means ‘enfolded’) order, and he refers to our own level of existence as the explicate, or unfolded, order.” “What is ‘out there’ is a vast ocean of waves and frequencies, and reality looks concrete to us only because our brains are able to take this holographic blur and convert it into the sticks and stones and other familiar objects that make up our world.”

Part 2: Mind and Body

3. The Holographic Model and Psychology
“Perhaps dreams are a bridge between the perceptual and nonmanifest orders and represent a ‘natural transformation of the implicate into the explicate.’”

“Wolf believes that all dreams are internal holograms.”

“Grof and his wife, Christina, have developed a simple, nondrug technique for inducing these holotropic, or nonordinary states of consciousness. They define a holotropic state of consciousness as one in which it is possible to access the holographic labyrinth that connects all aspects of existence.”

4. I Sing the Body Holographic
Mental imagery caused enabled cancer patients to double their survival time. The mentally retarded have a significantly lower rate of death from cancer. They don’t understand enough to be frightened. Drawings were more informative than blood tests is predicting survival of advanced cancer patients. …“their bodies responded not to reality, but to what they were imagining as reality.”

“In six double-blind studies placebos were found to be 56 percent as effective as morphine in relieving pain.”

He describes a patient who near death got completely better, with the tumor gone, because he believed a new medicine would work. When he heard on the news that the medicine was not effective, he died.

Ten patients were in a room. Nine were given an amphetamine and one a barbiturate. The lone barbiturate taker became animated like the other. In another room the drugs were reversed with the same effect. The lone amphetamine taker slept. Even an injection of caffeine won’t keep caffeine-sensitive individuals awake if they believe they are receiving a sedative. In a chemotherapy study 30 percent of those receiving a placebo lost their hair.

People with multiple personalities have illnesses and conditions in one personality which disappear when another personality is in control. Visual acuity can differ. The voice patterns of multiples are different. We all have the ability to control these things. Multiples can change habits at will even after they recover. TB death rates fell when the cause was discovered even though there was no improved treatment.

People learn voluntary control and can have a fencing foil completely through the body without bleeding or injury. In India a person is swung with hooks in the back with no injury. Hypnosis can produce cures by planting the belief. Even genetic conditions have been cured this way. Belief allows fire walking. “According to the holographic, the mind/body ultimately cannot distinguish between the neural holograms the brain uses to experience reality and the ones it conjures up while imagining reality.”

5. A Pocketful of Miracles
“One psychic ability that appears to play a role in miracles is psychokinesis or PK.” Mental processes affect biological ones. Meaning is both mental and physical in nature. A quantum wave provides an electron with information. Psychokinesis could arise from mental processes that provide meaning so there would be a resonance of meanings, an exchange of information. Laying on of hands or praying may cause psychokinesis. Bones have been healed this way. Thousands saw Jansenist miracles, such as enduring tortures without injury, over a period of many years.

Fire walking shows that maybe reality can be reprogrammed. Fire burns flesh is habit. Just like multiple personalities can change their patterns, “consciousness can mediate directly in the implicate order…” “Bohm admits to believing that the universe is all ‘thought’ and reality exists only in what we think.”

A man was hypnotized and told then when he woke he would not be able to see his daughter. When he woke the hypnotist stood behind his daughter and held up a watch. The man was able to read the inscription the watch. Subjects can identify the contents of a randomly selected sealed box. Meaning is conveyed from a foreign object to the mind. Resonance and psychokinesis occur again. Some have materialized food and other items out of the air. Paramahansa Yogananda: “whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely instantly comes to pass.” A woman did not eat or drink for 35 years. A woman made a whole grove of trees disappear.

“Put another way, there is no reality above and beyond that created by the integration of all consciousness, and the holographic universe can potentially be sculpted in virtually limitless ways by the mind.”

6. Seeing Holographically
“…the holographic model offers the best explanation for understanding the human energy field.”

“…when the main focus of a person’s consciousness is on the material world, the frequencies of their energy field tend to be in the lower range and are not too far removed from the 250 cps of the body’s biological frequencies. In addition to these, people who are psychic or who have healing abilities also have frequencies of roughly 400 cps to 800 cps in their field. People who can go into a trance … operate in a narrow band between 800 and 900 cps.” “People who have frequencies above 900 cps are what Hunt calls mystical personalities.” There is an enormous amount of information in the energy field. Psychics can see and interpret.. “Many psychics believe that disease actually originates in the energy field.” “… ideas that are prominent in our thoughts quickly appear as images in the energy field.” “… it may be that by imagining an illness, even unconsciously, and repeatedly reinforcing its presence in the energy field, we are in effect programming the body to manifest the illness.”

A touch stimulus took .0001 second to reach the brain, .1 second to push a button, and .5 second to be consciously aware of the stimulus or the button press. The subjects thought that they had consciously controlled the button press. The human energy field responds to the stimulus even before the brain does. The brain is just a good computer. The mind is not in the brain but in the energy field.

Part III: Space and Time

7. Time Out of Mind
A gifted clairvoyant was able to see an ancient site in operation, describing the clothes, hair styles, etc. from an artifact recovered from the site. He was never wrong. Sometimes the archaeologists had to change their views. Looking at a hologram with different views can make the image appear to be moving, simulating the passage of time.

People have seen scenes appear from the past. A person could consistently describe who would be sitting in a randomly selected seat later. So this psychic could see the future. Even non-psychics are good at remote viewing. 60 to 68 percennt of precognitions occur in dreaming. Bohm says that people see the present which is implicate and moving toward making that future.. Many recall past lives.

“Is it possible that our unconscious mind is not only aware of the rough outline of our destiny, but actually steers us toward its fulfillment?” “Edgar Cayce also spoke of thoughts as tangible things, a finer form of matter and, when he was in a trance, repeatedly told his clients that their thoughts created their destiny…”

People could progress to future lives. They see fewer people in the world then.

“ we are still children when it comes to understanding the true nature of time.”

8. Traveling in the Superhologram
“Space, too, must be viewed as a product of our mode of perception.”
Patients with out of body experiences could describe their operations correctly. Others couldn’t. “Remember that in a holographic universe, location itself is just an illusion.”

Those with bear death experience agree on what they see, light and energy that can manifest itself in human forms or not, or partially. Time and space cease to exist. Thought structures form patterns. The beings of light ask if your motivation was love. Images produced by interacting thought forms appear real. “Some near death experiencers discovered that in the presence of the light they suddenly had direct access to all knowledge. One person said “One thing I learned was that we are all part of one big, living universe. If we think we can hurt another person or another living being without hurting ourselves we are sadly mistaken. ..”

Swedenborg noted that in the spirit world one no longer needs to eat food, but added that information takes its place as a source of nourishment. A seven year old boy said “Death is like walking into your own mind.”

Sri Aurobindo had to learn to silence the endless chatter of words and thoughts in order to explore the planes of consciousness. “What is physical reality? It is, said Sri Aurobindo, just ‘a mass of stable light.’”

9. Return to the Dreamtime
“We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum..”

Another fascinating book, chalk full of quantum physics and how it might help explain a wide variety of paranormal or unusual phenomenon. ( )

A truly interesting theory about the energy that comprises life. ( )

First edition, 19991,no ISBN,