So far we’ve talked about two things that would be important to understand if we are living in a hologram: 1) we don’t create our experiences and can’t change them, so why waste your time and energy trying; and 2) by definition a hologram is not real, and neither is what we call “reality.” There is one more thing we need to talk about that is perhaps the most difficult to accept, for a number of reasons.

  I first want to introduce you to Julian Baggini and a very important feature article he wrote for The Telegraph on February 24, 2024, which most Americans probably didn’t read since The Telegraph is a British daily newspaper. Julian said….

  “Our age-old (and some might say na?ve) conception of human nature has long held on to three dogmas. The first is that we are the originators of our own choices and actions. We are not puppets but responsible, free agents, able to chart our own way in the world. The second is that human beings are special, different from the other animals. Third, we assume that, most of the time at least, our perceptions accurately represent the world as it is.

  “The scientific study of consciousness has thrown doubt on all three of these beliefs. Take our free will. It should surprise no one to discover that the brains of mothers change during pregnancy. Attributing our moods and behaviors to hormones has become the new common sense. But the idea that our thoughts and actions are the direct result of brain activity can also be disturbing. If “my brain made me do it,” in what sense am I in control of myself?

  “The fact that much of the research mentioned above has been based on studies of birds, mice and flies also suggests—beyond the need to insute humans from experimental health risks—that we don’t take the idea that humans are fundamentally different from other animals seriously any more…. The species hierarchy upon which we have built our moral universe has been troubled.

  “But perhaps most disturbing is the idea that we don’t even perceive the world as it is. For centuries we have known that the exact way the world seems to us is determined by our senses, not the things in themselves. The green of grass, for example, is generated by our visual system. But more recent research goes even further. Our brains do not just color (sometimes literally) our perceptions, they actually construct them. Brains are not passive receptors of perception but are rather “prediction machines” seeing what they expect to see, hearing what they expect to hear.

  “Think of it like this. We tend to think that our minds are like video cameras, recording the world. In fact, they are more like projectors, creating our reality. Of course there are data coming in. But those data are used to help train the projector to get better and to fg up when the projection fails to include something critical. That’s why we so often fail to notice things that do not have a direct bearing on our survival, such as features of buildings we pass each day.”

  I’m going to repeat the most important (and most difficult) thing Julian said…

  We tend to think that our minds are like video cameras, recording the world. In fact, they are more like projectors, creating our reality. Of course there are data coming in. But those data are used to help train the projector to get better and to fg up when the projection fails to include something critical.

  And now, if you will forgive me, I want to quote myself from a book I wrote 14 years ago (Butterflies are Free to Fly: A new and radical approach to spiritual evolution)….

  “It means our senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, etc. – are not really sensing some independent “reality” “out there,” but in fact are projecting that reality so it appears to be “out there.” In addition to being “receivers,” then, our eyes are “projectors.”

  And I’m going to repeat a quote I used in the st chapter from world-renown neurophysiologist Dr. Karl Pribram, “our brains mathematically construct ‘hard’ reality by relying on input from a frequency domain.”

  And now back to me in Butterflies….

  “Apparently, once our brain converts the wave frequencies downloaded from The Field, it projects them “out there” and makes it appear like we are surrounded by a “total immersion movie.” Then, and only then, our senses “read” what has been projected “out there” and bring that information back to the brain.

  Did I make it clear? The test scientific research in brain physiology and consciousness is proving that, despite what EVERYONE was taught, we do not just perceive the world “out there” through our senses; we FIRST project it out there, and then use the perceptions coming back in “to help train the projector to get better and to fg up when the projection fails to include something critical.” (Baggini)

  Here’s how I summarized it in Butterflies….

  “The human brain is a holographic receiver which transtes the wave frequencies it receives into particle locations, creating a holographic picture, which it then projects out through the senses into space and time for us to perceive and experience.”

  I realize this is a lot to process, and very contradictory to what we all were taught in school. So, I’m going to let this sit for a few days and then carry on in my next chapter.