The Holographic Universe (18 page)

Other stigmatists have
had similar experiences. St. Teresa of Avila had a vision of an angel piercing
her heart with a sword, and after she died a deep fissure was found in her
heart. Her heart, with the miraculous sword wound still clearly visible, is now
on display as a relic in Alba de Tormes, Spain. A nineteenth-century French
stigmatist named Marie-Julie Jahenny kept seeing the image of a flower in her
mind, and eventually a picture of the flower appeared on her breast. It
remained there twenty years. Nor are such abilities limited to stigmatists. In
1913 a twelve-year-old girl from the village of Bussus-Bus-Suel, near
Abbeville, France, made headlines when it was discovered that she could
consciously command images, such as pictures of dogs and horses, to appear on
her arms, legs, and shoulders. She could also produce words, and when someone
asked her a question the answer would instantly appear
on her
skin.

Surely such demonstrations
are examples of the ejection of psychophysical structures outside the brain. In
fact, in a way stigmata themselves, especially those in which the flesh has
formed into nail-like protrusions, are examples of the brain projecting images
outside itself and impressing them in the soft clay of the body holographic.
Dr. Michael Grosso, a philosopher at Jersey City State College who has written
extensively on the subject of miracles, has also arrived at this conclusion.
Grosso, who traveled to Italy to study Padre Pio's stigmata firsthand, states,
“One of the categories in my attempt to analyze Padre Pio is to say that he had
an ability to symbolically transform physical reality. In other words, the
level of consciousness he was operating at enabled him to transform physical
reality in the light of certain symbolic ideas. For example, he identified with
the wounds of the crucifixion and his body became permeable to those psychic
symbols, gradually assuming their form.”

So it appears that
through the use of images, the brain can tell the body what to do, including
telling it to make more images. Images making images. Two mirrors reflecting
each other infinitely. Such is the nature of the mind/body relationship in a
holographic universe.

Laws Both Known
and Unknown

At the beginning of this
chapter, I said that instead of examining the various mechanisms the mind uses
to control the body, the chapter would be devoted primarily to exploring the
range of this control. In doing so I did not mean to deny or diminish the
importance of such mechanisms. They are crucial to our understanding of the
mind/body relationship, and new discoveries in this area seem to appear every
day.

For example, at a recent
conference on psychoneuroimmunology—a new science that studies the way the mind
(psycho), the nervous system (neuro), and the immune system (immunology)
interact—Candace Pert, chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of
Mental Health, announced that immune cells have neuropeptide receptors.
Neuropeptides are molecules the brain uses to communicate, the brain's
telegrams, if you will. There was a time when it was believed that
neuropeptides could only be found in the brain. But the existence of receptors
(telegram receivers) on the cells in our immune system implies that the immune
system is not separate from but is an extension of the brain. Neuropeptides
have also been found in various other parts of the body, leading Pert to admit
that she can no longer tell where the brain leaves off and the body begins.

I have excluded such
particulars, not only because I felt examining the extent to which the mind can
shape and control the body was more relevant to the discussion at hand, but
also because the biological processes responsible for mind/body interactions are
too vast a subject for this book. At the beginning of the section on miracles I
said there was no clear-cut reason to believe Michelli's bone regeneration
could not be explained by our current understanding of physics. This is less
true of stigmata. It also appears to be very much not true of various
paranormal phenomena reported by credible individuals throughout history, and
in recent times by various biologists, physicists, and other researchers.

In this chapter we have
looked at astounding things the mind can do that, although not fully
understood, do not seem to violate any of the known laws of physics. In the
next chapter we will look at some of the things the mind can do that cannot be
explained by our current scientific understandings. As we will see, the
holographic idea may shed light in these areas as well. Venturing into these
territories will occasionally involve treading on what might at first seem to
be shaky ground and examining phenomena even more dizzying and incredible than
Mohotty's rapidly healing wounds and the images on St. Veronica Giuliani's
heart. But again we will find that, despite their daunting nature, science is
also beginning to make inroads into these territories.

Acupuncture
Microsystems and the Little Man in the Ear

Before closing, one last
piece of evidence of the body's holographic nature deserves to be mentioned.
The ancient Chinese art of acupuncture is based on the idea that every organ
and bone in the body is connected to specific points on the body's surface. By
activating these acupuncture points, with either needles or some other form of
stimulation, it is believed that diseases and imbalances affecting the parts of
the body connected to the points can be alleviated and even cured. There are
over a thousand acupuncture points organized in imaginary lines called
meridians on the body's surface. Although still controversial, acupuncture is
gaining acceptance in the medical community and has even been used successfully
to treat chronic back pain in racehorses.

In 1957 a French
physician and acupuncturist named Paul Nogier published a book called
Treatise
of Auriculotherapy
, in which he announced his discovery that in addition to
the major acupuncture system, there are two smaller acupuncture systems on both
ears. He dubbed these
acupuncture microsystems
and noted that when one
played a kind of connect-the-dots game with them, they formed an anatomical map
of a miniature human inverted like a fetus. Unbeknownst to Nogier, the Chinese
had discovered the “little man in the ear” nearly 4,000 years earlier, but a
map of the Chinese ear system wasn't published until after Nogier had already
laid claim to the idea.

The little man in the
ear is not just a charming aside in the history of acupuncture. Dr. Terry
Oleson, a psychobiologist at the Pain Management Clinic at the University of
California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, has discovered that the ear
microsystem can be used to diagnose accurately what's going on in the body. For
instance, Oleson has discovered that increased electrical activity in one of
the acupuncture points in the ear generally indicates a pathological condition
(either past or present) in the corresponding area of the body. In one study,
forty patients were examined to determine areas of their body where they
experienced chronic pain. Following the examination, each patient was draped in
a sheet to conceal any visible problems. Then an acupuncturist with no
knowledge of the results examined only their ears. When the results were
tallied it was discovered that the ear examinations were in agreement with the
established medical diagnoses 75.2 percent of the time.

Ear examinations can
also reveal problems with the bones and internal organs. Once when Oleson was
out boating with an acquaintance he noticed an abnormally flaky patch of skin
in one of the man's ears. From his research Oleson knew the spot corresponded
to the heart, and he suggested to the man that he might want to get his heart
checked. The man went to his doctor the next day and discovered he had a
cardiac problem which required immediate open-heart surgery.

Oleson also uses
electrical stimulation of the acupuncture points in the ear to treat chronic
pain, weight problems, hearing loss, and virtually all kinds of addiction. In
one study of 14 narcotic-addicted individuals, Oleson and his colleagues used
ear acupuncture to eliminate the drug requirements of 12 of them in an average
of 5 days and with only minimal withdrawal symptoms. Indeed, ear acupuncture
has proved so successful in bringing about rapid narcotic detoxification that
clinics in both Los Angeles and New York are now using the technique to treat
street addicts.

Why would the
acupuncture points in the ear be aligned in the shape of a miniature human?
Oleson believes it is because of the holographic nature of the mind and body.
Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every
portion of the body may also contain the image of the whole. “The ear holograph
is, logically, connected to the brain holograph which itself is connected to
the whole body,” he states. “The way we use the ear to affect the rest of the
body is by working through the brain holograph.”

Oleson believes there
are probably acupuncture microsystems in other parts of the body as well. Dr.
Ralph Alan Dale, the director of the Acupuncture Education Center in North
Miami Beach, Florida, agrees. After spending the last two decades tracking down
clinical and research data from China, Japan, and Germany, he has accumulated
evidence of eighteen different microacupuncture holograms in the body,
including ones in the hands, feet, arms, neck, tongue, and even the gums. Like
Oleson, Dale feels these microsystems are “holographic reiterations of the
gross anatomy,” and believes there are still other such systems waiting to be
discovered. In a notion reminiscent of Bohm's assertion that every electron in
some way contains the cosmos, Dale hypothesizes that every finger, and even
every cell, may contain its own acupuncture microsystem.

Richard Leviton, a
contributing editor at
East West
magazine, who has written about the
holographic implications of acupuncture microsystems, thinks that alternative
medical techniques—such as reflexology, a type of massage therapy that involves
accessing all points of the body through stimulation of the feet, and
iridology, a diagnostic technique that involves examining the iris of the eye
in order to determine the condition of the body—may also be indications of the
body's holographic nature. Leviton concedes that neither field has been experimentally
vindicated (studies of iridology, in particular, have produced extremely
conflicting results) but feels the holographic idea offers a way of
understanding them if their legitimacy is established.

Leviton thinks there may
even be something to palmistry. By this he does not mean the type of hand
reading practiced by fortune-tellers who sit in glass storefronts and beckon
people in, but the 4,500-year-old Indian version of the science. He bases this
suggestion on his own profound encounter with an Indian hand reader living in
Montreal who possessed a doctorate in the subject from Agra University, India.
“The holographic paradigm provides palmistry's more esoteric and controversial
claims a context for validation,” says Leviton.

It is difficult to
assess the type of palmistry practiced by Leviton's Indian hand reader in the
absence of double-blind studies, but science is beginning to accept that at
least some information about our body is contained in the lines and whorls of
our hand. Herman Weinreb, a neurologist at New York University, has discovered
that a fingerprint pattern called an
ulnar loop
occurs more frequently
in Alzheimer's patients than in nonsufferers. In a study of 50 Alzheimer's
patients and 50 normal individuals, 72 percent of the Alzheimer's group had the
pattern on at least 8 of their fingertips, compared to only 26 percent in the
control group. Of those with ulnar loops on all 10 fingertips, 14 were
Alzheimer's sufferers, but only 4 members of the control group had the pattern.

It is now known that 10
common genetic disabilities, including Down's syndrome, are also associated
with various patterns in the hand. Doctors in West Germany are now using this
information to analyze parents’ hand prints and help determine whether expectant
mothers should undergo amniocentesis, a potentially dangerous genetic screening
procedure in which a needle is inserted into the womb to draw off amniotic
fluid for laboratory testing.

Researchers at West
Germany's Institute of Dermatoglyphics in Hamburg have even developed a
computer system that uses an opto-electric scanner to take a digitized “photo”
of a patient's hand. It then compares the hand to the 10,000 other prints in
its memory, scans it for the nearly 50 distinctive patterns now known to be associated
with various hereditary disabilities, and quickly calculates the patient's risk
factors. So perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss palmistry out of hand.
The lines and whorls in our palms may contain more about our whole self than we
realize.

Harnessing the
Powers of the Holographic Brain

Throughout this chapter
two broad messages come through loud and clear. According to the holographic
model, the mind/body ultimately cannot distinguish the difference between the
neural holograms the brain uses to experience reality and the ones it conjures
up while imagining reality. Both have a dramatic effect on the human organism,
an
effect
so powerful that
it
can modulate the immune system,
duplicate and/or negate the effects of potent drugs, heal wounds with amazing
rapidity, melt tumors, override our genetic programming, and reshape our living
flesh in ways that almost defy belief. This then is the first message: that
each of us possesses the ability, at least at some level, to influence our
health and control our physical form in ways that are nothing short of
dazzling. We are all potential wonderworkers, dormant yogis, and it is clear
from the evidence presented in the preceding pages that it would behoove us
both as individuals and as a species to devote a good deal more effort into
exploring and harnessing these talents.