Ok, we're lousy snowflakes.
Ok, we're the trees.⁸³
(Anne Dillard)

How Do They Know?

Writes Laszlo:

Given the ordered complexity that meets our eye, the reasonable assumption
is that, somehow, preferential interconnections must exist in nature.
If so, there must be some factors in the universe that interconnect
(and therewith nondeterministically correlates) the evolving systems.
Finding this factor is not a simple matter.⁸⁴

In our previous nonlinear chaotic step into re-enchantment, we left the world as an ever becoming, creative, adaptive, and self-organizing complex system comprised of self-organizing complex systems all the way down. The magical process of self-organization is understood by the science of complexity in terms of open systems, random fluctuations, nonlinearity, and multiple feedback loops. Computer simulations indicated that the order-generating process occurred spontaneously if the system was interconnected throughout its totality. It appears that all components of the self-organizing system have ability to correlate and communicate with each other. The question is, how do they know how?

Applying this question to universal evolution, Laszlo suggests that it would not occur in a fragmented and random manner. As a necessary condition of evolution, along with the diversifying process or divergence in spacetime, there has to be a unifying process or convergence within a higher-order system. "Without the latter property the universe would be populated with nothing more interesting than an array of chaotically varied and mutually uncoordinated particles, randomly colliding in hydrogen and helium gases."⁸⁵

The interconnected world of complexity left us to wonder. What is this crazy glue that interconnects? What is this amazing realm that orchestrates universal processes into coherence and correlation? The total interconnectedness in space and time would not be possible if all universal information was not preserved and stored somewhere and somehow. Imagine the grandiose capacity this storage utility must have!

Laszlo writes that gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear fields cannot account for the total universal interconnectedness. That is why there is the possibility that an unknown fifth universal field exists in nature. A good candidate for this a holographic field. Why? Writes Bohm: "The holograph suggests a new kind of knowledge and new understanding of the universe, in which information about the whole is enfolded in each part and in which the various objects of the world result from the unfolding of this information."⁸⁶

Move into a giant Hologram!

Do you feel lonely being fragmented from the rest of the world?
If so, this universe is for you because here
you are united into an unbroken wholeness with the rest of the world.
Do you have a low self-esteem?
If so, this universe is for you because here you are a Cosmos!

I wish to move into the holographic world. It seems so interesting and cozy. Would you like to visit with me the magical holographic reality?

Holograms, indeed, have truly fascinating and magical properties. They are three-dimensional photographs (or holographs) that appear real and convincing, just as usual material subjects, but if you try to touch a holographic image, your hand will simply pass through. Holographs are produced when a laser beam is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed. The second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first. When this happens they create seemingly chaotic, circular interference patterns, which are then recorded on a piece of film. When another laser beam shines through these holographic interference patterns, the three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The most amazing property of holograms is that each, even the tiniest fragment of the holographic film, contains the entire image of the photographed object. The smaller the piece of the film, the fuzzier the image, but it is still an image of the whole. In other words, each part of the hologram contains all the information of the whole. In this sense, the hologram is not comprised of any parts; it is an undivided, unbroken wholeness.

The very essence of a holographic principle therefore is all in all.

In the book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm speculates that our physical world is an explicate or unfolded holographic image of a deeper, single, and vast nonmaterial reality, which he calls hidden, implicate or enfolded order.⁸⁷ Laszlo believes that Bohm's model is fundamentally compatible with the contemporary quantum-vacuum interaction (QVI) concept, according to which the deeper implicate order is made of a quantum informational holographically unified field (holofield).⁸⁸

The emergent holographic model of reality is truly exciting. If every little corner of the universe enfolds the information of the whole image, this means that if we knew how to access it, we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. In such a universe, everything is the one thing, unbroken wholeness, one enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos.

Have you ever felt your holographic unbroken wholeness with all these entities?
In Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of the Consciousness, psychologist Jenny Wade proposes that the development of consciousness has holographic origins.⁸⁹ Laszlo, who summarized related research in physical sciences and psychology, speculates that the stream of human experiences and creativity might arise from brain/informational holofield interactions. These interactions, believes Laszlo, can perhaps provide a scientific account for Carl Jung's concept of archetypes arising from a vast, limitless unconscious process shared by all humanity, emerging from the accumulated experience of years of shared history. These archetypes comprise a collective human psyche that has its own non-material reality.⁹⁰

From the holographic vantage point, we are not entities separated from the world, and not even complex systems interconnected with the world. We are the world, and it makes a big difference…

trying to escape from the lonely world
where no one cares
where everyone is imprisoned
within own cocoon
and nothing has value
in the context of a cold infinity,
I imagined a different universe
where my life is worth an entire Cosmos
where each drop of the rain on the roof is me
where the wind sweeping away autumn leaves is me
where a whispered mountain echo is me.
I am this star, I am this crying child,
I am an enigmatic atom
puzzled by the question: to exist or not to exist?
as a mountain, I enjoy speaking with clouds
as a cloud, I like to rest on the peak of the mountain
I am a seed, from which the whole world grows,

I am the world,

and being the world,
would I hurt myself?

This is the essence of holonomic thinking, and it is re-enchanting. Entering this new millennium, our world has become increasingly holographic. As the everyday routine, in the near future, we will have holographic movies, holographic television, holographic computers, holographic art, and the advanced technology of virtual holographic reality. Our discovery of the holographic phenomenon might be a coincidence, but if to follow Bohm and others, it may also be a reflection of the deep holographic structure of the world, where every entity, including humans, is a unique and creative expression of unbroken wholeness.

I am in the world and the world is in me.⁹¹

Developing consciousness that perceives the world as an unbroken wholeness would be the most important mission of the science curriculum that is stepped into the deeper re-enchantment of a holonomic paradigm. While studying snowflakes, drops of a morning dew, particles evaporating into the air, tears of rain, ocean waves, whirlpools of a flowing running river, or glistening pieces of ice, holonomic science education would emphasize the underlying unity behind all these phenomena: they are all made of ever-flowing and ever-recycling water. The same goes for us. While each has unique identities and appearances, we all are manifestations of a single running river of a deeper holographic reality.

Our individuality resembles a snowflake.
The seas evaporate water,
clouds build and lose water in snowflakes which dissolve and go to sea.
What have I to do with the ocean,
I with my unique and novel hexagons and spikes?⁹²

The purpose of the complex holonomic science curriculum can be expressed though the beautiful and unbeautiful: To reunite humanity with the rest of the Cosmos, "to see the same currents running through our human blood that run through swirling galaxies and colossal solar systems, that crash through the great oceans and course through our own veins, that move the mightiest of mountains as well as our glorious moral aspirations."⁹³

The both steps, the science of complexity and the holographic model of the world, lead us into even deeper re-enchantment - the world of postmodern organicism. Let us take this step. One, two, three.

-Oh, my!
-What is happening, Claire?
-Oh my, it is so big!
It is alive. Everything is conscious, every little atom,
and they're all connected. The universe is one gigantic heart.⁹⁴