The Holographic Universe (27 page)

This leads to a
disturbing question. If we are seeing less than half of what is out there, what
is out there that we are not seeing? What misspelled street signs and blind
spots are escaping our attention completely? Our technological prowess provides
us with a few answers. For example, although spiderwebs look drab and white to
us, we now know that to the ultraviolet-sensitive eyes of the insects for whom
they were designed, they are actually brightly colored and hence alluring. Our
technology also tells us that fluorescent lamps do not continuously provide
light, but are actually flickering on and off at a rate that is just a little
too fast for us to discern. Yet this unsettling strobelike effect is quite
visible to honeybees, who must be able to fly at breakneck speed over a meadow
and still see every flower that whizzes by.

But are there other
important aspects of reality that we are not seeing, aspects that are beyond
even our technological grasp? According to the holographic model, the answer is
yes. Remember that in Pribram's view, reality at large is really a frequency
domain, and our brain is a kind of lens that converts these frequencies into
the objective world of appearances. Although Pribram began by studying the
frequencies of our normal sensory world, such as frequencies of sound and
light, he now uses the term
frequency domain
to refer to the
interference patterns that compose the implicate order.

Pribram believes there
may be all kinds of things out there in the frequency domain that we are not
seeing, things our brains have learned to edit out regularly of our visual
reality. He thinks that when mystics have transcendental experiences, what they
are reaiiy doing is catching glimpses of the frequency domain. “Mystical
experience makes sense when one can provide the mathematical formulas that take
one back and forth between the ordinary world,
or
‘image-object’ domain,
and the ‘frequency’ domain,” he states.

The Human Energy
Field

One mystical phenomenon
that appears to involve the ability to see reality's frequency aspects is the
aura, or human energy field. The notion that there is a subtle field of energy
around the human body, a balolike envelope of light that exists just beyond
normal human perception, can be found in many ancient traditions. In India, sacred
writings that date back over five thousand years refer to this life energy as
prana.
In China, since the third millennium B.C., it has been called
ch'i
and
is believed to be the energy that flows through the acupuncture meridian
system. Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical philosophy that arose in the sixth century
B.C., calls this vital principle
nefish
and teaches that an egg-shaped
bubble of iridescence surrounds every human body. In their book
Future
Science
, writer John White and parapsychologist Stanley Krippner list 97
different cultures that refer to the aura with 97 different names.

Many cultures believe
the aura of an extremely spiritual individual is so bright it is visible even
to normal human perception, which is why so many traditions, including Christian,
Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Egyptian, depict saints as having halos or
other circular symbols around their heads. In his book on miracles Thurston
devotes an entire chapter to accounts of luminous phenomena associated with
Catholic saints, and both Neumann and Sai Baba are reported to have
occasionally had visible auras of light around them. The great Sufi mystic
Hazrat Inayat Khan, who died in 1927, is said to have sometimes given off so
much light that people could actually read by it.

Under normal
circumstances, however, the human energy field is visible only to individuals
who have a specially developed capacity to see it. Sometimes people are born
with the ability. Sometimes it develops spontaneously at a certain point in a
person's life, as it did in my case, and sometimes it develops as the result of
some practice or discipline, often of a spiritual nature. The first time I saw
the distinctive mist of light around my arm I thought it was smoke and jerked
my arm up to see if I had somehow caught my sleeve on fire. Of course, I hadn't
and quickly discovered that the light surrounded my entire body and formed a
nimbus around everyone else's as well.

According to some
schools of thought the human energy field has a number of distinct layers. I do
not see layers in the field and have no personal basis to judge if this is true
or not. These layers are actually said to be three-dimensional energy bodies
that occupy the same space as the physical body but are of increasingly larger
size so that they only look like layers, or strata, as they extend outward from
the body.

Many psychics assert
that there are seven main layers, or subtle bodies, each progressively less
dense than the one before it, and each increasingly more difficult to see.
Different schools of thought refer to these energy bodies by different names.
One common system of nomenclature refers to the first four as the etheric body;
the astral, or emotional body; the mental body, and the causal, or intuitive
body. It is generally believed that the etheric body, the body that is closest
in size to the physical body, is a kind of energy blueprint and is involved in
guiding and shaping the growth of the physical body. As their names suggest,
the next three bodies are related to emotional, mental, and intuitive
processes. Virtually no one agrees on what to call the remaining three bodies,
although it is commonly agreed that they have to do with the soul and higher
spiritual functioning.

According to Indian
yogic literature, and to many psychics as well, we also have special energy
centers in our body. These focal points of subtle energy are connected to
endocrine glands and major nerve centers in the physical body, but also extend
up and into the energy field. Because they resemble spinning vortices of energy
when they are looked at head-on, yogic literature refers to them as
ckakras
,
from the Sanskrit word for “wheel,” and this term is still used today.

The crown chakra, an
important chakra that originates in the uppermost tip of the brain and is associated
with spiritual awakening, is often described by clairvoyants as looking like a
little cyclone whirling in the energy field on top of the head, and it is the
only chakra I see clearly. (My own abilities appear to be too rudimentary to
permit me to see the other chakras.) It ranges from a few inches to a foot or
more in height When people are in a joyous state, this whirlwind of energy
grows taller and brighter, and when they dance, it bobs and sways like a candle
flame. I've often wondered if this was what the apostle Luke was seeing when he
described the “flame of the Pentecost,” the tongues of fire that appeared on
the heads of the apostles when the Holy Ghost descended on them.

The human energy field
is not always bluish white, but can possess various colors. According to
talented psychics, these colors, their muddiness or intensity, and their
location in the aura are related to a person's mental state, emotional state,
activity, health, and assorted other factors. I can only see colors occasionally
and sometimes can interpret their meaning, but again my abilities in this area
are not terribly advanced.

One person who does have
advanced abilities is therapist and healer Barbara Brennan. Brennan began her
career as an atmospherics physicist working for NASA at the Goddard Space
Flight Center, and later left to become a counselor. Her first inkling that she
was psychic came when she was a child and discovered she could walk blindfolded
through the woods and avoid the trees simply by sensing their energy fields
with her hands. Several years after she became a counselor, she began seeing
halos of colored light around people's heads. After overcoming her initial
shock and skepticism, she set about to develop the ability and eventually
discovered she had an extraordinary natural talent as a healer.

Brennan not only sees
the chakras, layers, and other fine structures of the human energy field with
exceptional clarity, but can make startlingly accurate medical diagnoses based
on what she sees. After looking at one woman's energy field, Brennan told her
there was something abnormal about her uterus. The woman then told Brennan that
her doctor had discovered the same problem, and it had already caused her to
have one miscarriage. In fact, several physicians had recommended a
hysterectomy and that was why she was seeking Brennan's counsel. Brennan told
her that if she took a month off and took care of herself, her problem would
clear up. Brennan's advice turned out to be correct, and a month later the
woman's physician confirmed that her uterus had returned to normal. A year
later the woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

In another case Brennan
was able to see that a man had problems performing sexually because he had
broken his coccyx (tailbone) when he was twelve. The still out-of-place coccyx
was applying undue pressure to his spinal column, and this in turn was causing
his sexual dysfunction.

There seems to be little
Brennan cannot pick up by looking at the human energy field. She says that in
its early stages cancer looks gray-blue in the aura, and as it progresses, it
turns to black. Eventually, white spots appear in the black, and if the white
spots sparkle and begin to look as if they are erupting from a volcano, it
means the cancer has metastasized. Drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, and
cocaine are also detrimental to the brilliant, healthy colors of the aura and
create what Brennan calls “etheric mucus.” In one instance she was able to tell
a startled client which nostril he habitually used to snort cocaine because the
field over that side of his face was always gray with the sticky etheric mucus.

Prescription drugs are
not exempt, and often cause dark areas to form in the energy field over the
liver. Potent drugs such as chemotherapy “clog” the entire field, and Brennan
says she has even seen auric traces of the supposedly harmless radiopaque dye
used to diagnose spinal injuries, a full ten years after it has been injected
into a person's spine. According to Brennan, a person's psychological condition
is also reflected in their energy field. An individual with psychopathic
tendencies has a top-heavy aura. The energy field of a masochistic personality
is coarse and dense and is more gray than blue. The field of a person with a
rigid approach to life is also coarse and grayish, but with most of its energy
concentrated on the outer edge of the aura, and so on.

Brennan says that
illness can actually be caused by tears, blockages, and imbalances in the aura,
and by manipulating these dysfunctional areas with her hands and her own energy
field, she can greatly’ enhance a person's own healing processes. Her talents
have not gone unnoticed. Swiss psychiatrist and thanatologist Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross says Brennan is “probably one of the best spiritual healers in the
Western Hemisphere.” Bernie Siegel is equally laudatory: “Barbara Brennan's
work is mind opening. Her concepts of the role disease plays and how healing is
achieved certainly fit in with my experience.”

As a physicist, Brennan
is keenly interested in describing the human energy field in scientific terms
and believes Pribram's assertion that there is a frequency domain beyond our
field of normal perception is the best scientific model we have so far for
understanding the phenomenon. “From the point of view of the holographic
universe, these events [the aura and the healing forces required to manipulate
its energies] emerge from frequencies that transcend time and space; they don't
have to be transmitted. They are potentially simultaneous and everywhere,” she
says.

That the human energy
field exists everywhere and is nonlocal until it is plucked out of the
frequency domain by human perception is evidenced in Brennan's discovery that
she can read a person's aura even when the person is many miles distant. The
longest-distance aura reading she has done so far was during a telephone
conversation between New York City and Italy. She discusses this, as well as
many other aspects of her remarkable abilities, in her recent and fascinating
book
Hands of Light.

The Energy Field
of the Human Psyche

Another gifted psychic
who can see the aura in great detail is Los Angeles-based “human energy field
consultant” Carol Dryer. Dryer says she has been able to see auras for as long
as she can remember, and indeed it was quite some time before she realized
other people couldn't see auras. Her ignorance in this regard frequently landed
her in trouble as a child when she would tell her parents intimate details
about their friends, things she had no apparent way of knowing.

Dryer makes her living
as a psychic, and in the past decade and a half has seen over five thousand
clients. She is well known in the media because her client list includes many
celebrities such as Tina Turner, Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, Judy Collins,
Valerie Harper, and Linda Gray. But even the star power of her client list does
not begin to convey the true extent of her talent. For instance, Dryer's client
list also includes physicists, noted journalists, archaeologists, lawyers, and
politicians, and she has used her abilities to assist the police and frequently
does consultation work for psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors.

Like Brennan, Dryer can
give long-distance readings, but prefers to be in the same room with the
person. She can also see a person's energy field as well with her eyes closed
as she can with her eyes open. In fact, she generally keeps her eyes closed
during a reading to help her concentrate solely on the energy field. This does
not mean that she sees the aura only in her mind's eye. “It's always in front
of me as if I'm looking at a movie or a play,” says Dryer. “It's as real as the
room I'm sitting in. Actually, it's more real and more brightly colored.”