The Holographic Universe (11 page)

In the 1960s Grof was
offered a position at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and moved to the
United States. The center was also doing controlled studies of the
psychotherapeutic applications of LSD, and this allowed Grof to continue his
research. In addition to examining the effects of repeated LSD sessions on
individuals with various mental disorders, the center also studied its effects
on “normal” volunteers—doctors, nurses, painters, musicians, philosophers,
scientists, priests, and theologians. Again Grof found the same kind of
phenomena occurring again and again. It was almost as if LSD provided the human
consciousness with access to a kind of infinite subway system, a labyrinth of
tunnels and byways that existed in the subterranean reaches of the unconscious,
and one that literally connected everything in the universe with everything
else.

After personally guiding
over three thousand LSD sessions (each lasting at least five hours) and
studying the records of more than two thousand sessions conducted by
colleagues, Grof became unalterably convinced that something extraordinary was
going on. “After years of conceptual struggle and confusion, I have concluded
that the data from LSD research indicate an urgent need for a drastic revision
of the existing paradigms for psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and possibly
science in general,” he states. “There is at present little doubt in my mind
that our current understanding of the universe, of the nature of reality, and
particularly of human beings, is superficial, incorrect, and incomplete.”

Grof coined the term
transpersonal
to describe such phenomena, experiences in which the consciousness transcends
the customary boundaries of the personality, and in the late 1960s he joined
with several other like-minded professionals, including the psychologist and
educator Abraham Maslow, to found a new branch of psychology called
transpersonal
psychology.

If our current way of
looking at reality cannot account for transpersonal events, what new
understanding might take its place? Grof believes it is the holographic model.
As he points out, the essential characteristics of transpersonal
experiences—the feeling that all boundaries are illusory, the lack of
distinction between part and whole, and the interconnectedness of all
things—are all qualities one would expect to find in a holographic universe. In
addition, he feels the enfolded nature of space and time in the holographic
domain explains why transpersonal experiences are not bound by the usual
spatial or temporal limitations.

Grof thinks that the
almost endless capacity holograms have for information storage and retrieval
also accounts for the fact that visions, fantasies, and other “psychological
gestalts,” all contain an enormous amount of information about an individual's
personality. A single image experienced during an LSD session might contain
information about a person's attitude toward life in general, a trauma he
experienced during childhood, how much self-esteem he has, how he feels about
his parents, and how he feels about his marriage—all embodied in the overall
metaphor of the scene. Such experiences are holographic in another way, in that
each small part of the scene can also contain an entire constellation of
information. Thus, free association and other analytical techniques performed
on the scene's miniscule details can call forth an additional flood of data
about the individual involved.

The composite nature of
archetypal images can be modeled by the holographic idea. As Grof observes,
holography makes it possible to build up a sequence of exposures, such as
pictures of every member of a large family, on the same piece of film. When
this is done the developed piece of film will contain the image of an
individual that represents not one member of the family, but all of them at the
same time. “These genuinely composite images represent an exquisite model of a certain
type of transpersonal experience, such as the archetypal images of the Cosmic
Man, Woman, Mother, Father, Lover, Trickster, Fool, or Martyr,” says Grof.

If each exposure is
taken at a slightly different angle, instead of resulting in a composite picture,
the piece of film can be used to create a series of holographic images that
appear to flow into one another. Grof believes this illustrates another aspect
of the visionary experience, namely, the tendency of countless images to unfold
in rapid sequence, each
one
appearing and then dissolving into the next
as if by magic. He thinks holography's success at modeling so many different
aspects of the archetypal experience suggests that there is a deep link between
holographic processes and the way archetypes are produced.

Indeed, Grof feels that
evidence of a hidden, holographic order surfaces virtually every time one
experiences a nonordinary state of consciousness:

Bohm's concept of the
unfolded and enfolded orders and the idea that certain important aspects of
reality are not accessible to experience and study under ordinary circumstances
are of direct relevance for the understanding of unusual states of
consciousness. Individuals who have experienced various nonordinary states of
consciousness, including well-educated and sophisticated scientists from
various disciplines, frequently report that they entered hidden domains of
reality that seemed to be authentic and in some sense implicit in, and
supraordinated to, everyday reality.

Holotropic
Therapy

Perhaps Grof s most
remarkable discovery is that the same phenomena reported by individuals who
have taken LSD can also be experienced without resorting to drugs of any kind.
To this end, 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. These include one's biological, psychological, racial, and spiritual
history, the past, present, and future of the world, other levels of reality,
and all the other experiences already discussed in the context of the LSD
experience.

The Grof's call their
technique
holotropic therapy
and use only rapid and controlled
breathing, evocative music, and massage and body work, to induce altered states
of consciousness. To date, thousands of individuals have attended their
workshops and report experiences that are every bit as spectacular and
emotionally profound as those described by subjects of Grof's previous work on
LSD. Grof describes his current work and gives a detailed account of his
methods in his book
The Adventure of Self-Discovery.

Vortices of
Thought and Multiple Personalities

A number of researchers
have used the holographic model to explain various aspects of the thinking
process itself. For example, New York psychiatrist Edgar A. Levenson believes
the hologram provides a valuable mode] for understanding the sudden and
transformative changes individuals often experience during psychotherapy. He
bases his conclusion on the fact that such changes take place no matter what
technique or psychoanalytic approach the therapist uses. Hence, he feels all
psychoanalytic approaches are purely ceremonial, and change is due to something
else entirely.

Levenson believes that
something is resonance. A therapist always knows when therapy is going well, he
observes. There is a strong feeling that the pieces of an elusive pattern are
all about to come together. The therapist is not saying anything new to the
patient, but instead seems to be resonating with something the patient already
unconsciously knows: “It is as though a huge, three-dimensional, spatially
coded representation of the patient's experience develops in the therapy,
running through every aspect of his life, his history and his participation
with the therapist. At some point there is a kind of ‘overload’ and everything
falls into place.”

Levenson believes these
three-dimensional representations of experience are holograms buried deep in
the patient's psyche, and a resonance of feeling between the therapist and
patient causes them to emerge in a process similar to the way a laser of a
certain frequency causes an image made with a laser of the same frequency to
emerge from a multiple image hologram. “The holographic model suggests a
radically new paradigm which might give us a fresh way of perceiving and
connecting clinical phenomena which have always been known to be important, but
were relegated to the ‘art’ of psychotherapy,” says Levenson. “It offers a
possible theoretical template for change and a practical hope of clarifying
psychotherapeutic technique.”

Psychiatrist David
Shainberg, associate dean of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Program at the
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry in New York, feels Bohm's
assertion that thoughts are like vortices in a river should be taken literally
and explains why our attitudes and beliefs sometimes become fixed and resistant
to change. Studies have shown that vortices are often remarkably stable. The
Great Red Spot of Jupiter, a giant vortex of gas over 25,000 miles wide, has
remained intact since it was first discovered 300 years ago. Shainberg believes
this same tendency toward stability is what causes certain vortices of thought
(our ideas and opinions) to become occasionally cemented in our consciousness.

He feels the virtual
permanence of some vortices is often detrimental to our growth as human beings.
A particularly powerful vortex can dominate our behavior and inhibit our
ability to assimilate new ideas and information. It can cause us to become
repetitious, create blockages in the creative flow of our consciousness, keep
us from seeing the wholeness of ourselves, and make us feel disconnected from
our species. Shainberg believes that vortices may even explain things like the
nuclear arms race: “Look at the nuclear arms race as a vortex arising out of
the greed of human beings who are isolated in their separate selves and do not
feel the connection to other human beings. They are also feeling a peculiar
emptiness and become greedy for everything they can get to fill themselves.
Hence nuclear industries proliferate because they provide large amounts of
money and the greed is so extensive that such people do not care what might
happen from their actions.”

Like Bohm, Shainberg
believes our consciousness is constantly unfolding out of the implicate order,
and when we allow the same vortices to take form repeatedly he feels we are
erecting a barrier between ourselves and the endless positive and novel
interactions we could be having with this infinite source of all being. To
catch a glimmer of what we are missing, he suggests we look at a child.
Children have not yet had the time to form vortices, and this is reflected in
the open and flexible way they interact with the world. According to Shainberg
the sparkling aliveness of a child expresses the very essence of the
unfolding-enfolding nature of consciousness when it is unimpeded.

If you want to become
aware of your own frozen vortices of thought, Shainberg recommends you pay
close attention to the way you behave in conversation. When people with set
beliefs converse with others, they try to justify their identities by espousing
and defending their opinions. Their judgments seldom change as a result of any
new information they encounter, and they show little interest in allowing any
real conversational interaction to take place. A person who is open to the
flowing nature of consciousness is more willing to see the frozen condition of
the relationships imposed by such vortices of thought. They are committed to
exploring conversational interactions, rather than endlessly repeating a static
litany of opinions. “Human response and articulation of that response, feedback
of reactions to that response and the clarifying of the relationships between
different responses, are the way human beings participate in the flow of the
implicate order,” says Shainberg.

Another psychological
phenomena that bears several earmarks of the implicate is multiple personality
disorder, or MPD. MPD is a bizarre syndrome in which two or more distinct
personalities inhabit a single body. Victims of the disorder, or “multiples,”
often have no awareness of their condition. They do not realize that control of
their body is being passed back and forth between different personalities and
instead feel they are suffering from some kind of amnesia, confusion, or
black-out spells. Most multiples average between eight to thirteen personalities,
although so-called super-multiples may have more than a hundred
subpersonalities.

One of the most telling
statistics regarding multiples is that 97 percent of them have had a history of
severe childhood trauma, often in the form of monstrous psychological,
physical, and sexual abuse. This has led many researchers to conclude that
becoming a multiple is the psyche's way of coping with extraordinary and
soul-crushing pain. By dividing up into one or more personalities the psyche is
able to parcel out the pain, in a way, and have several personalities bear what
would be too much for just one personality to withstand.

In this sense becoming a
multiple may be the ultimate example of what Bohm means by fragmentation. It is
interesting to note that when the psyche fragments itself, it does not become a
collection of broken and jagged-edged shards, but a collection of smaller
wholes, complete and self-sustaining with their own traits, motives, and
desires. Although these wholes are not identical copies of the original
personality, they are related to the dynamics of the original personality, and
this in itself suggests that some kind of holographic process is involved.