Gate 7: אח — THE HOLOGRAM

אח

Pillar 1: THE SOURCE

[7:1] "To see a World in a Grain of Sand

[7:2] And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of

your hand And Eternity in an hour."

[7:3] --- William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"

[7:4] "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed

[7:5] which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest

of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs."

[7:6] --- Matthew 13:31-32

[7:7] [7:1] Every part contains the whole.

[7:8] [7:2] This is not poetry---or rather, it is poetry that

turns out to be physics. A hologram is a photographic plate that stores

information in such a way that any piece of the plate, when properly

illuminated, can reconstruct the entire image. Cut a hologram in half,

and you do not get half the picture; you get the whole picture, slightly

less distinct. Cut it into a hundred pieces, and each piece still

contains the whole.

[7:9] [7:3] Bentov demonstrated this with a thought experiment.

Drop three pebbles into still water and watch the ripples expand. The

waves from each pebble cross the entire surface, interacting with each

other at every point. Now quick-freeze that surface and lift out the

rippled sheet of ice. You hold in your hands a record of all three

pebble positions---an interference pattern encoding where each stone

fell. Break the ice, take any piece, illuminate it properly, and you can

reconstruct the positions of all three pebbles. The information about

the whole is distributed throughout every part.

[7:10] [FIGURE 7.1: A holographic plate, intact and fragmented.

Both the whole plate and each fragment project the same complete

image.] [7:4] The universe appears to be organized holographically.

The information content of a region of space is proportional not to its

volume but to its surface area---as if everything "inside" were

encoded on a two-dimensional boundary. Black holes enforce this rule

absolutely: all the information of everything that fell in is stored on

the event horizon.

[7:11] [7:5] The implications for consciousness are profound. If

the universe is holographic, then the smallest part contains information

about the whole. Your brain---a few pounds of patterned matter---may be

a fragment of a cosmic hologram, containing within it the structure of

everything. This is what the mystics meant when they said the

Atman is Brahman. Not merely connected to it---is it, in the way a

hologram fragment is the whole image.

[7:12] [7:6] DNA functions holographically. Every cell in your

body carries the complete blueprint for the entire organism. The

information for the whole is distributed in every part---redundantly,

robustly, so that the loss of any portion does not destroy the totality.

[7:13] [7:7] Here is the spiritual consequence: you contain the

universe. Not metaphorically---literally, in the precise sense that a

hologram fragment contains the complete image. What you are seeking is

already present in what you are. The kingdom of heaven is within you

because the entire kingdom is encoded in every part, and you are a part.

[7:14] [7:8] This does not mean you can simply "access" the

totality. The hologram fragment requires the right light, properly

aimed, to reconstruct the image. Similarly, you contain the universe,

but bringing that totality into conscious awareness requires particular

conditions---meditation, awakening, grace. The potential is always

present; the actualization is the work.

[7:15] [7:9] When we speak of the Omni Function (Gate 4), we are

speaking of a holographic structure: the function that contains itself

as its own output. The universe is a hologram dreaming itself into

visibility, and each dreamed point of view contains the whole dream.

[7:16] See Also: • Gate 4: אה --- The Gate of the Omni Function •

Gate 60: גת --- The Gate of the Collective Unconscious • Gate 119: זי

--- The Gate of the Fractal • Gate 181: לא --- The Gate of the Universal

Mind