The Holographic Universe.
A non-fiction book by Michael Talbot. Published by Harpercollins, 1991.
Publisher description:
Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicists David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding of the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.
Author description excerpt: (link)
But despite the popularity of his fiction among horror fans, it was for his nonfiction that Talbot was best known, much of it focusing on new age concepts, mysticism, and the paranormal. Arguably his most famous and most significant is The Holographic Universe (1991), which examines the increasingly accepted theory that the entire universe is a hologram; the book remains in print and highly discussed today. Michael Talbot died of leukemia in 1992 at age 38.
Here is an interview with Michael Talbot:
Michael Talbot died from bone cancer just one year after publishing his famous book.
Although Talbot is not known to have made it much of a political issue, he was openly gay, living with a boyfriend, and has become a role model for gay intellectuals. In 1992, Talbot died of lymphocystic leukemia at age 38. With his disease occurring in the midst of the tragic AIDS crisis, Talbot is credited with the ironic comment that he suffered from "an unfashionable disease" since he did not suffer from AIDS but rather from a form of leukemia which also killed him at this young age.
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Why is it important?
The Holographic Universe has steadily reshaped the New Age movement, generating a renewed interest in mystical thinking throughout the 1990s, and ever since. It catalyzed the “Aquarian Conspiracy” which is today working toward the end of Christianity and the beginning of a new era of occultism. Their goal is called the “Age of Aquarius,” in which Satan will rule unopposed over the minds of mankind in the name of peace, harmony, and undifferentiated oneness.
The book is cited as proof that science and mysticism are compatible. Materialist researchers are challenged to consider phenomenon which defies conventional thinking. Although the reports, studies, and testimony used aren’t credible, Talbot insists on a new investigation into the “paranormal.”
It helped inspire The X-Files (the popular 1990s paranormal investigation TV series), The Matrix (1999), and The Secret (2006 book, popularized by Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement), which both went on to have major impacts on culture, cloaking New Age occultism as “truth-seeking.”
What must we learn about it?
The Holographic Universe is an attempt to create a unified theory of reality, metaphysics, matter, energy, consciousness, and spacetime using holograms as the core analogy for how things connect. Here is an old video on holograms:
Quantum holograms
The theory is as follows: rather than living in a Newtonian universe where physical objects abide by strict laws of physics—meaning, they behave as we would expect, regardless of what anybody sees or thinks—we and everything else in the universe are projecting our consciousness (like a “laser”) through some kind of cosmic “hologram” which manifests an imperfect, illusory reality into being. This illusion is typically convincing enough to trick us into thinking it makes sense, but not always. When it fails, we notice paranormal things.
The Universe Hologram is supposed to contain the entire spacetime continuum in all dimension, seen and unseen, where past, present, and future are contained.
Arguments are contrived and highly speculative. Talbot is a New Age “truth-seeker” and not a scientist, but combines wacky arguments from two obscure scientists (Bohm and Pribram) to concoct an understanding of quantum physics that mimics holograms and relies on human brains to operate. He forces everything to conform to his analogy, and confesses that he’s had hallucinations of people’s “auras” and strange mystical experiences since he was a child.
Perhaps the 1990s New Age comedian Bill Hicks summed up the idea most concisely:
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.”
Intention as power
Quantum Reality proponents and New Agers do not believe in logic. They believe the outcomes of everything are magically determined, and that intentionality overrides rules of physics or logic. He cites studies in which researchers flipped a coin while a group of people envisioned it only landing on the same result (heads, for instance). Astonishingly, it produced the expected result 75% instead of 50%. Other experiments claim to prove that we can retroactively change things by thought alone; researchers record sounds on tape that are later different if a listener was intentionally imagining something about it being changed. Those who practiced meditation and mysticism were reportedly more effective at shaping reality in these ways. Such bogus studies are given great weight by Talbot, who is possibly the most biased person imaginable.
Truth as evil
Any kind of mass-conditioning, ideology, or religions fulfills its own worst fears because the Universe itself changes things to make sure the outcome people are focused on will come to pass. Thus, if we all changed our belief to be loving, accepting, and detached from materialism, we would no longer need to eat, sleep, or compete for anything, because we would transcend mortality and petty concerns. Our diseases would be magically cured, nobody would do anything wrong, and we could finally escape the cyclical tragedies of human existence.
New Agers want there to be no logic or truth at all, only an amorphous haze of psychedelia, meditation, trances, and emotional experiences. Everything is subjective, unreliable, and illusory. Anyone who tries to use logic, facts, and proof is actually evil and must be destroyed, because their stubbornness is what manifests restrictive rules of physics, biology, and spacetime, preventing magical, wonderous changes from happening by the power of collective thought alone.
Reversal of victimhood
Talbot’s theory not only supports reincarnation, but claims that every human orchestrates good and bad details of their lives before they are even born. They can do this down to the smallest details in some cases. While disembodied as ghosts we arrange for “accidents” and synchronicities that will occur in our next lives in order to teach ourselves lessons. Since time is an illusion, we can intervene in our previous life after we die, yet before we are born. Talbot writes about a woman who had regression hypnosis after being violently raped. According to the woman, she regressed so far back in her consciousness that she witnessed a time before her own life, as a ghost. She realized that she had planned for the rape to happen to herself. Why? To teach her the meaning of life. How charitable. Talbot does not attempt to explain the logic of this, such as whether the woman needed to also persuade her future rapist’s ghost into participating in this lesson, or if the rapist separately decided to arrange the crime against her. In any case, the logic of manifesting outcomes and this reincarnation planning means that victims are to blame for everything bad that happens to them.
In their anticipated Age of Aquarius, we may presume that rapists, murderers, and every other kind of fiend would be forgiven for their deeds, and that the victims would be held accountable because they must have wanted it so badly that they magically forced somebody to do it to them.
Denial of Creator
Like every other New Ager, Talbot rejects God while pretending to explain things that God does. In his view there is no differentiation between spirit and flesh; between waves and particles; between energy and matter. He talks about love, unity, and blissful detachment as the purpose of everything, yet his own logic explicitly rules out morality and guilt, and creates no incentive for being a good person, or honest. In fact, maximum delusion is the ultimate power according to his theory. His logic is so weak that he cannot even account for why children who do not understand physics would not float away by the power of their imagination, or why crazy people who have severe hallucinations don’t manifest all sorts of things.
Choose your future
When discussing mystical foresight into future events, or premonitions, Talbot lays out four possible futures that have been seen by gifted seers. In all four outcomes, the population of earth is decimated, leaving only a handful of survivors. These survivors either live in: 1) joyless sterile future space stations, 2) happy Mother Earth worship and spiritualism, 3) dome cities and underground high tech dystopias, 4) hunter-gatherer survivalism. Clearly, Talbot favors the one where we all get along and worship nature, taking our spirit journeys and devoting our lives to truth-seeking in all of its post-logic ways. Somehow, we are meant to believe that we can decide which of these futures will happen, despite all of the insanity he has already laid out.
Takeaways
The Holographic Universe is a handbook of deception and delusion, striking at the very foundations of logic and reality, inviting the reader to become a pagan shaman, eastern mystic, or occultist of some kind in order to “seek the truth” and find out firsthand about the “paranormal.”
Contradictions abound. He says ghosts script our lives before we are born, but also that our intentions determine our futures, while we are doomed to only four possible futures collectively. Presumably, every period in history before ours had the same kinds of paradoxical non-choices.
God may have given Talbot a fitting end. He hated God and denied His power, claiming that people can magically cure themselves by the power of thought, and yet he died from bone cancer a year later. Shouldn’t he have been able to take his own advice and overcome the limitations of his own ego and fear?
Why do New Agers almost never live happy lives? Why are they sickly, lonely, dysfunctional, weak, irrational, and burdened with addictions, hatreds, and phobias if they hold the keys to enlightenment, health, and joy?
New Agers/Aquarian Conspirators will almost never mention the New Age, the Holographic Universe, or any of the key concepts in their “teachings.” They have a policy of secrecy, dressing up their Satanic lies in whatever fashion they think the listener would like to hear.