The Holographic Universe (22 page)

Literally hundreds of
credible accounts of fire immunity exist It is reported that when Bernadette of
Lourdes was in ecstasy she was also impervious to fire. According to witnesses,
on one occasion her hand dropped so close to a burning candle while she was in
trance that the flames licked around her fingers. One of the individuals
present was Dr. Dozous, the municipal physician of Lourdes. Being of quick
mind, Doaous timed the event and noted that it was a full ten minutes before
she came out of trance and removed her hand. He later wrote, “I saw it with my
own eyes. But I swear, if anyone had tried to make me believe such a story I
would have laughed him to scorn.”

On September 7,1871, the
New York Herald
reported that Nathan Coker, an elderly Negro blacksmith
living in Easton, Maryland, could handle red-hot metal without being harmed. In
the presence of a committee that included several doctors, he heated an iron shovel
until it was incandescent and then held it against the soles of his feet until
it was cool. He also licked the edge of the red-hot shovel and poured melted
lead shot in his mouth, allowing it to run over his teeth and gums until it
solidified. After each of these feats the doctors examined him and found no
trace of injury.

While on a hunting trip
in 1927 in the Tennessee mountains, K. R. Wissen, a New York physician,
encountered a twelve-year-old boy who was similarly impervious. Wissen watched
the boy handle red-hot irons out of a fireplace with impunity. The boy told
Wissen he had discovered his ability by accident when he picked up a red-hot
horseshoe in his uncle's blacksmith shop. The pit of flaming embers the
Grosvenors watched Mohotty walk through was twenty-feet long and measured 1328
degrees Fahrenheit on the
National Geographic
team's thermometers. In
the May 1959 issue of
the Atlantic Monthly
, Dr. Leonard Feinberg of the
University of Illinois reports witnessing another Ceylonese fire-walking ritual
during which the natives carried red-hot iron pots on their heads without being
harmed. In an article in
Psychiatric Quarterly
, psychiatrist Berthold
Schwarz reports watching Appalachian Pentecostals hold their hands in an
acetylene flame without being harmed, and so on, and so on.

The Laws of
Physics as Habits and Realities Both Potential and Real

Just as it is hard to
imagine where the deflected energy goes in some of the examples of PK we have
looked at, it is equally difficult to understand where the energy of a red-hot
iron pot goes while the pot is resting flat against the hair and flesh of a
Ceylonese native's head. But if consciousness can mediate directly in the
implicate order, it becomes a more tractable problem. Again, rather than being
due to some undiscovered energy or law of physics (such as some kind of
insulating force field) that operates
within
the framework of reality,
it would result from activity on an even more fundamental level and involve the
processes that create both the physical universe and the laws of physics in the
first place.

Looked at another way,
the ability of consciousness to shift from one entire reality to another
suggests that the usually inviolate rule that
fire burns human flesh
may
only be one program in the cosmic computer, but a program that has been
repeated so often it has become one of nature's habits. As has been mentioned,
according to the holographic idea, matter is also a kind of habit and is
constantly born anew out of the implicate, just as the shape of a fountain is
created anew out of the constant flow of water that gives it form. Peat
humorously refers to the repetitious nature of this process as one of the
universe's neuroses. “When you have a neurosis you tend to repeat the same
pattern in your life, or do the same action, as if there's a memory built up
and the thing is stuck with that,” he says. “I tend to think things like chairs
and tables are like that also. They're a sort of material neurosis, a
repetition. But there is something subtler going on, a constant enfolding and
unfolding. In this sense chairs and tables are just habits in this flux, but
the flux is the reality, even if we tend only to see the habit.”

Indeed, given that the
universe and the laws of physics that govern it are also products of this flux,
then they, too, must be viewed as habits. Clearly they are habits that are
deeply ingrained in the holo-movement, but supernormal talents such as immunity
to fire indicate that, despite their seeming constancy, at least some of the rules
that govern reality can be suspended. This means the laws of physics are not
set in stone, but are more like Shainberg's vortices, whirlpools of such vast
inertial power that they are as fixed in the holomovement as our own habits and
deeply held convictions are fixed in our thoughts.

Grof s proposal that
altered states of consciousness may be required in order to make such changes
in the implicate is also attested to by the frequency with which fire immunity
is associated with heightened faith and religious zeal. The pattern that began
to take shape in the last chapter continues, and its message becomes
increasingly clear—the deeper and more emotionally charged our beliefs, the
greater the changes we can make in both our bodies and reality itself.

At this point we might
ask, if consciousness can make such extraordinary alterations under special
circumstances, what role does it play in the creation of our day-to-day
reality? Opinions are extremely varied. In private conversation Bohm admits to
believing that the universe is all “thought” and reality exists only in what we
think, but again he prefers not to speculate about miraculous occurrences.
Pribram is similarly reticent to comment on specific events but does believe a
number of different potential realities exist and consciousness has a certain
amount of latitude in choosing which one manifests. “I don't believe anything
goes,” he says, “but there are a lot of worlds out there that we don't
understand.”

After years of firsthand
experiences with the miraculous, Watson is bolder. “I have no doubt that
reality is in a very large part a construct of the imagination. I am not
speaking as a particle physicist or even as someone who is totally aware of
what's going on in the frontier of that discipline, but I think we have the
capacity to change the world around us in quite fundamental ways” (Watson, who
was once enthusiastic about the holographic idea, is no longer convinced that
any
current theory in physics can adequately explain the supernormal abilities of the
mind).

Gordon Globus, a
professor of psychiatry and philosophy at the University of California at
Irvine, has a different but similar view. Globus thinks the holographic theory
is correct in its assertion that the mind constructs concrete reality out of
the raw material of the implicate. However, he has also been greatly influenced
by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda's now famous otherworldly experiences with
the Yaqui Indian shaman, Don Juan. In stark contrast to Pribram, he believes
that the seemingly inexhaustible array of “separate realities” Castaneda
experienced under Don Juan's tutelage—and indeed even the equally vast array of
realities we experience during ordinary dreaming—indicate that there are an
infinite number of potential realities enfolded in the implicate. Moreover,
because the holographic mechanisms the brain uses to construct everyday reality
are the same ones it uses to construct our dreams and the realities we
experience during Castanedaesque altered states of consciousness, he believes
all three types of reality are fundamentally the same.

Does
Consciousness Create Subatomic Particles or
Not Create Subatomic Particles, That Is the Question

This difference of
opinion indicates once again that the holographic theory is still very much an
idea in the making, not unlike a newly formed Pacific island whose volcanic
activity keeps it from having clearly defined shores. Although some might use
this lack of consensus to criticize it, it should be remembered that Darwin's
theory of evolution, certainly one of the most potent and successful ideas
science has ever produced, is also still very much in a state of flux, and
evolutionary theorists continue to debate its scope, interpretation, regulatory
mechanisms, and ramifications.

The difference of
opinion also reveals just how complex a puzzle miracles are. Jahn and Dunne
offer yet another opinion on the role consciousness plays in the creation of
day-to-day reality, and although it differs from one of Bohm's basic premises,
because of the possible insight it offers into the process by which miracles
are effected, it deserves our attention.

Unlike Bohm, Jahn and
Dunne believe subatomic particles do
not
possess a distinct reality
until consciousness enters the picture. “I think we have long since passed the
place in high energy physics where we're examining the structure of a passive
universe,” Jahn states. “I think we're into the domain where the interplay of
consciousness in the environment is taking place on such a primary scale that
we are indeed creating reality by any reasonable definition of the term.”

As has been mentioned,
this is the view held by most physicists. However, Jahn and Dunne's position
differs from the mainstream in an important way. Most physicists would reject
the idea that the interplay between consciousness and the subatomic world could
in any way be used to explain PK, let alone miracles. In fact, the majority of
physicists not only ignore any implications this interplay might have but
actually behave as if it doesn't exist. “Most physicists develop a somewhat
schizophrenic view,” says quantum theorist Fritz Rohrlich of Syracuse
University. “On the one hand they accept the standard interpretation of quantum
theory. On the other they insist on the reality of quantum systems even when
these are not observed.”

This bizarre
I'm-not-going-to-think-about-it-even-when-I-know-it's-true attitude keeps many
physicists from considering even the philosophical implications of quantum
physics’ most incredible findings. As N. David Mermin, a physicist at Cornell
University, points out, physicists fall into three categories: a small minority
is troubled by the philosophical implications; a second group has elaborate
reasons why they are not troubled, but their explanations tend “to miss the
point entirely”; and a third group has no elaborate explanations but also
refuses to say why they aren't troubled. “Their position is unassailable,” says
Mermin.

Jahn and Dunne are not
so timid. They believe that instead of discovering particles, physicists may
actually be
creating
them. As evidence, they cite a recently discovered
subatomic particle called an
anomalon
, whose properties vary* from
laboratory to laboratory. Imagine owning a car that had a different color and
different features depending on who drove it! This is very curious and seems to
suggest that an anomalon's reality depends on who finds/creates it.

Similar evidence may
also be found in another subatomic particle. In the 1930s Pauli proposed the
existence of a massless particle called a
neutrino
to solve an
outstanding problem concerning radioactivity. For years the neutrino was only
an idea, but then in 1957 physicists discovered evidence of its existence. In
more recent years, however, physicists have realized that if the neutrino possessed
some mass, it would solve several even thornier problems than the one facing
Pauli, and lo and behold in 1980 evidence started to come in that the neutrino
had a small but measurable mass! This is not all. As it turned out, only
laboratories in the Soviet Union discovered neutrinos with mass. Laboratories
in the United States did not. This remained true for the better part of the
1980s, and although other laboratories have now duplicated the Soviet findings,
the situation is still unresolved.

Is it possible that the
different properties displayed by neutrinos are due at least in part to the
changing expectations and different cultural biases of the physicists who
searched for them? If so, such a state of affairs raises an interesting
question. If physicists do not discover the subatomic world but create it, why
do some particles, such as electrons, appear to have a stable reality no matter
who observes them? In other words, why does a physics student with no knowledge
of an electron still discover the same characteristics that a seasoned
physicist discovers?

One possible answer is
that our perceptions of the world may not be based solely on the information we
receive through our five senses. As fantastic as this may sound, a very good
case can be made for such a notion. Before explaining, I would like to relate
an occurrence I witnessed in the middle 1970s. My father had hired a
professional hypnotist to entertain a group of friends at his house and had
invited me to attend the event. After quickly determining the hypnotic
susceptibility of the various individuals present, the hypnotist chose a friend
of my father's named Tom as his subject. This was the first time Tom had ever
met the hypnotist.

Tom proved to be a very
good subject, and within seconds the hypnotist had him in a deep trance. He
then proceeded with the usual tricks performed by stage hypnotists. He
convinced Tom there was a giraffe in the room and had Tom gaping in wonder. He
told Tom that a potato was really an apple and had Tom eat it with gusto. But
the highlight of the evening was when he told Tom that when he came out of
trance, his teenage daughter, Laura, would be completely invisible to him.
Then, after having Laura stand directly in front of the chair in which Tom was
sitting, the hypnotist awakened him and asked him if he could see her.