"Considered together, Bohm and Pribram's theories provide a profound new way of looking at the world: Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe." (p. 54)

As you may imagine, I was fascinated with this book when I began reading it in 1994 at the suggestion of a respected friend. At about the sixth chapter--right where the author started discussing auras, astral bodies, and chakras--I hit a snag, and put the book down with the intention of finishing it "soon." Sixteen years later and tens of thousands of other pages later, and I again got bogged down in the exact same section (at this point I guess I felt like the book was attempting to shoehorn every single new age trope into the author's new "paradigm.") This time, though, I persevered through what I considered two-star material, and got to the final chapter which unveils Talbot's image of a holographic universe where the part and the whole comprise one another, where everything literally "inter-is" everything else. On the whole, a fascinating--if nowhere near convincing--speculation on the nature of reality and a theoretical framework for what Greg Egan has elsewhere decried as "quantum mysticism" and what I consider really awesome if we could provide substantial evidence for it.

"Indeed, the holographic model itself is highly controversial and is by no means accepted by a majority of scientists. Nonetheless, and as we shall see, many important and impressive thinkers do support it and believe it may be the most accurate picture of reality we have to date." (p. 3)

"We are indeed on a shaman's journey, mere children struggling to become technicians of the sacred. We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one lesson stands out from above all others. As long as the formlessness and breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue to dream for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well defined." (p. 302)