🕒 12 min read • ✍️ 2383 words
Another way of looking at demons, UFO’s, psychic phenomena, past-lives, ghosts, coincidences, synchronicity, and the strangeness of our reality and ourselves.
Michael Talbot’s discussion with Jeffrey Mishlove, the holographic model and its implications.
Origins of the Holographic Model
- Developed independently by David Bohm (physicist, former protégé of Einstein) and Karl Pribram (neurophysiologist at Stanford).
- Pribram studied memory and found evidence the brain operates holographically. (01)
- Bohm studied subatomic physics and found reality at that level has holographic properties. (02)
- Together, they suggest the universe may be a kind of hologram (as a useful metaphor, not literal).
Key Property of a Hologram
- A holographic film stores images as interference patterns (like ripples from pebbles in a pond).
- If you cut the film in half and shine a laser through each piece, you get the whole image in each piece.
- This means: every part contains the whole → “find the universe in a grain of sand” (William Blake). (03)
Two Levels of Reality in a Hologram
- Concrete level – the 3D image we see (chairs, trees, bodies).
- Deeper level – an ocean of energy, holographically interconnected, where every part contains the whole.
- Analogy: TV image vs. the blur of radio waves in the room.
Implications for Separation & Connectedness
- Our everyday sense of being separate from others and objects is artificial.
- Western concepts (apple, electron) are mental pigeonholes, not ultimate reality.
- In quantum physics: two particles can affect each other instantaneously no matter the distance (non-locality).
- Bohm’s aquarium analogy: two TV screens showing different views of the same fish → we think two fish are signalling each other, but they are one deeper reality.
- Therefore: no real separation between electrons, people, or anything.
Psychic Phenomena Explained
- Psychic abilities don’t require signals traveling through space.
- If every neuron/cell contains the whole universe, then accessing “someone else’s” information is simply accessing the whole within yourself.
Memory & The Brain
- Karl Lashley’s experiments: rats still remembered mazes after different brain parts were removed → memory is not localized. (04)
- Memory is distributed like a hologram: whole contained in every part.
- Removing brain tissue makes memory fuzzier, not missing in fragments.
- The brain uses Fourier transforms (same math as holograms) for visual and sensory processing. (05)
- Suggests but doesn’t prove the brain is a hologram.
Consciousness & The Brain
- Talbot differs from Pribram: consciousness is not just electromagnetic interference patterns in the brain.
- Personal out-of-body experience: he was thinking while his brain was in his body on the bed.
- Later verified a book (by Guy de Maupassant) he saw while floating outside. (06)
- Suggests a subtler energy beyond current technology may be involved.
Bohm’s Quantum Potential & Hidden Realms
- Beyond the quantum level, there may be untold domains of reality with subtler energies.
- Mainstream quantum physics (Bohr’s view) assumes nothing exists beyond what we measure – Talbot calls this the “lure of completeness.”
- Bohm’s quantum potential is controversial, not widely accepted.
Uncertainty Principle & Macro Effects
- Subject/object distinction breaks down at quantum level.
- Example: helium cannot freeze solid – uncertainty principle manifests at our scale. (07)
- SQUID devices suggest current can flow both directions at once (quantum effect in macro world). (08) (09) (10)
Placebo Effect & Mind-Body Healing
- We respond more to internal models of reality than to external facts.
- Soldiers marched same distance but told different mileages → physiological responses matched what they believed, not actual distance.
- Cancer patient: tumors melted after believing in drug (Crebiosin), returned when belief failed, melted again with salt water placebo, finally died after final disbelief. (11) (12)
- Chemotherapy placebo: 30% of patients on fake drug lost their hair simply because they were told the toxic drug might cause hair loss, even though they only got the placebo. (13)
- Implication: our beliefs directly shape our biology.
Holographic Model & No Mind-Body Division
- If universe is holographic, the division between brain and body disappears.
- Questioning “pathways” becomes almost irrelevant – they are not separate.
Psychokinesis (Mind Over Matter)
- Bohm: no need to find an “energy” leaving the brain to move objects.
- We are continuum with objects → moving something is an act of resonance, realizing no division.
Near-Death Experiences
- NDEs often described with terms like frequency, energy, hologram.
- In NDEs, thought creates reality instantly: thinking of hunger → food appears; realizing nakedness → clothing appears (clothing has no soul).
- Suggests we enter deeper levels of the hologram when we leave the body.
Acupuncture
Talbot’s Personal Experiences
- Jade Buddha story: red light exploded from Buddha, a red stone appeared in its head – witnessed by mother and sister.
- Poltergeist (ages 5–20s): raining gravel, vacuum cleaner moving, drift glass materializing, stomping sounds with no one there, spaghetti noodles on chest, socks draped on plants.
- Poltergeist activity changed with his mood: mischievous when happy, negative when stressed (bites, needles flying into flesh).
- When he thought “demonic attack,” it worsened; when he regained positive frame, negativity stopped.
- Lesson: thoughts project into reality and become real.
UFO & Spiritual Encounters
- Age 3: memory in head of a being in a white robe that took him through the woods to a lake and told him “whatever happens in your life, don’t ever be afraid, because for you, the darkness is soft.” (Which comforted him).
- Age 5: father and friend saw UFO land; two figures emerged – first a man in a black suit, then the same being in white robe.
- They were frightened, went back to the car, and watched for 10 minutes with mother and father’s friend’s wife, and drove away since everyone was too afraid to approach.
- Footprints found the next day (narrow, like skis), photographed but later misplaced.
- Adult (College): driving with friend, saw UFO, got out of car to watch for 5 minutes, lost time (hours). Tried regression, didn’t recall anything.
- He thinks UFOs are non-physical, different “channels” on the holographic TV, not extraterrestrial in literal sense.
- Our psyche supplies the surface appearance (angels, demons, aliens) – the real phenomenon is deeper.
Reincarnation & Past Lives
- As a child, Talbot remembered past lives vividly – wouldn’t call parents “mum and dad,” drank strong black tea at 6, sat cross-legged on floor instead of using furniture, asked about “when I drowned.”
- Helen Wambach’s research: regressed hundreds of people – no one remembered being famous; 90% were peasants/laborers. (16)
- Historical details matched reality (e.g., forks with 2, then 3, then 4 prongs).
- Wambach found that subjects regressed to periods before the 17th century consistently reported eating with their hands or knives. As they moved into the 18th century, they began describing two-pronged forks, followed by three, and finally the four-pronged versions common today.
Synchronicity & Meaning
- Example: Buffalo Bill appeared three times in one day (game show, friend’s question, magazine article).
- Some synchronicities are meaningful, some are just “holographic dust storms” – not everything has cosmic significance.
Dreams & Inner Wisdom
- Dreams are a missed opportunity when we don’t pay attention to them – we have this enormous universe inside ourselves that’s constantly giving us lessons and messages.
- Psychiatrist: even a “jerk” patient had dreams with wisdom far beyond him: his dreams are constantly trying to teach him not to be a jerk or not to be selfish or not to be greedy or whatever.
- Talmud: “An uninterpreted dream is like a letter left unopened.”
Psychological Baggage & Spiritual Development
- Talbot’s key insight: before seeking paranormal abilities, deal with your own emotional baggage (therapy, self-awareness).
- If you don’t, entering more plastic levels of reality will be like a bad LSD trip – you’ll manifest fears and negativity.
- Most spiritual thing: learn to deal with the here and now.
Critique of Fragmented Science
- Atomic bomb developers: brilliant but didn’t think of implications – we don’t look at the larger picture.
- Bohm: fragmenting the universe leads to destruction – everything is infinitely interconnected (ecology, economics, sociology).
Creating a “Fake” Ghost
Michael Talbot describes a famous parapsychology experiment often called “The Philip Experiment,” conducted in the 1970s. (17)
- A group of people got together and they decided to hold séances, but instead of conjuring up a ghost, they decided to create a ghost.
- They invented a fictional history and named the ghost Philip. To ensure it was their own creation (not a real spirit), they deliberately gave him a historically inaccurate backstory (wrong King, and other historical inaccuracies).
- They held held séances in a solemn, mystical, serious manner, but nothing happened.
- Then they read research on Victorian séances, which were lively, loud, and involved drinking and singing. When they switched to that approach, Philip started to manifest.
For Talbot, the Philip Experiment demonstrates that:
- Thoughts and group beliefs can exteriorize into what appears to be an independent, intelligent entity. (This reminds me of Egregores ~ Penny)
- It mirrors his own poltergeist experiences: something that feels “other” but is actually a projection of the psyche that has taken on its own quasi-independent life.
- It supports the holographic model: consciousness can manifest seemingly autonomous beings out of its own interference patterns.
- The psyche contains semi-autonomous sub-entities that can, under certain conditions (like group séances or intense emotional states), materialize as seemingly external ghosts, poltergeists, or other phenomena.
Practical Application & “Infinite Self”
- We have an infinite self with enormous capability, but our conscious mind feeds it mistaken directions.
- Placebo effect shows: a single sentence (“this drug may cause hair loss”) can cause hair loss in people not taking the drug.
- Talbot’s approach: bless everything that enters your body – “this will only make me better” – even if you know some things are less healthy.
- Stone coin analogy: New Guinea tribe used huge stone coins as currency; one sank to ocean bottom – they still accepted ownership without physically moving it. (18)
- Carry the knowledge without carrying the weight of fear.
Ultimate Message
- Mystics say: everything is an expression of God – nothing that is an expression of God can hurt you.
- Look at the positive aspects; don’t put a charge on negative beliefs, or you activate the placebo effect in reverse.
