Re: Buhner - language of plants - another perspective

February 17, 2007

I believe that God did indeed create the

world and all that is within it to be deeply interconnected in

relationship (although I don't believe in praying to plants, I believe

it is God that gives the plants intelligence and the ability to heal

us). I am amazed, however, at how God has made everything so

wonderfully complex and precise, and how it's all been engineered to

work in concert together.

*****************************

What a wonderful exchange of thoughts, ideas and philosophies - I could spend

all day here soaking this in but just came to work to get water - geeez guys

thanks alot

Remember - this is only my pea-brained perspective of life.

If I may add just a bit to what Connie believes about God, which I totally agree

with, is that the the Almighty Creator made us in its own image, which would

carry us further to expound upon the fact that since we are His (or whatever you

may call Him, I personally think of THE one and only creator as Jesus Christ)

image, logic would follow that everything is interconnected through God, not

only the earth but the universe in its entirety, as well as the most infinite

sub-particle of space and time, not to mention the awsome intelligenge He gave

to plants and our interconnectedness to them. I also believe that everything is

so intertwined and connected that we are actually a very small " hologram " of a

much bigger picture, or larger hologram, if you will. This is what I think God

is, and to Him I give all the glory and praise for creating such a wonderful,

interconnected eternity of space and time, so therefore I say, we (everything)

are all one through the mighty Creator.

Concerning how wonderfully we are made is in and through His divine providence.

Everything is God breathed and it was formed by His infinite wisdom and

masterfully made through only His thoughts, which of course we will never fathom

all His mighty thoughts - ever. In other words He is " All that is " - the Great

" I am " . The article below is somewhat baffling, and confounding to say the

least, but it explains a lot of strange and even wonderful healings and

occurances etc., but it is what it is. Personally I think this giant hologram is

actually God in His entirety, of which His entirety is ever expounding and

growing, such as is the universe and all that is. Oh and btw, my wife thinks I

have lost ALL my marbles - she may be partially correct but she don't know of my

secret stash So sorry, but she, as well as you all, are connected to me and

vice-versa. Please read the very bottom of article concerning visualizations and

healing etc. Although it sounds very new-age, IMO

it is nothing short of the mighty power of God manifested in us and through us,

and is nothing new. Remember it is not we who have made ourselves or the heavens

or the plants, but ONLY God in His infinite wisdom. I also think you can use

this knowledge of understanding for good or evil - please pray that it be for

good and most importantly to His glory.

Please understand, I am not posting this for debate but for just another

perpective to a huge plethora of ideas and thoughts, and thouroghly enjoy

reading post from all different perspectives.. Would love to hear SB speak at

upcoming retreat.

THE UNIVERSE AS A HOLOGRAM by Talbot

DOES OBJECTIVE REALITY EXIST? OR IS THE UNIVERSE A PHANTASM?

IN 1982 A REMARKABLE EVENT TOOK PLACE. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS A RESEARCH

TEAM LED BY PHYSICIST ALAIN ASPECT PERFORMED WHAT MAY TURN OUT TO BE ONE OF THE

MOST IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTS OF THE 20th CENTURY.

YOU DID NOT HEAR ABOUT IT ON THE EVENING NEWS. In fact, unless you are in the

habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's

name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of

science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic

particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each

other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they

are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to

know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates

Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the

speed of light.{Speed of light broken } Since traveling faster than the speed of

light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has

caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away

Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical

explanations.

University of London physicist Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's

findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent

solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed

hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand

a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made

with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is

first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced

off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the

area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is

developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as

soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a

three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable

characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then

illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire

image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of

film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the

original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all

the information possessed by the whole.

The " whole in every part " nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new

way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western

science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical

phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective

parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend

themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed

holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only

get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery.

Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with

one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are

sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their

separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such

particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same

fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following

illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are

unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it

contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front

and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors,

you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities.

After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images

will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will

eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When

one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn;

when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain

unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the

fish must be instantaneously communicating

with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles

in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light

connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a

deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our

own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as

subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a

portion of their reality. Such particles are not separate " parts " , but facets of

a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and

indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical

reality is comprised of these " eidolons " , the universe is itself a projection, a

hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other

rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles

is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the

universe are infinitely interconnected.The electrons in a carbon atom in the

human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon

that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to

categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe,

all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a

seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as

fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in

which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional

space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be

viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a

sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist

simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be

possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck

out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for

the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth

to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic

particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy

that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It

must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of " All That Is. "

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden

in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it

does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of

reality is a " mere stage " beyond which lies " an infinity of further development "

Bohm Is Not The Only Researcher...

Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a

hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford

neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic

nature of reality. Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of

how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies

have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are

dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of landmark experiments in the

1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's

brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex

tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able

to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious " whole in every

part " nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he

had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram

believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but

in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way

that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece

of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the

brain is itself a hologram.

Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in

so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to

memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the

average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in

five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica). Similarly, it has been discovered

that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding

capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two

lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many

different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic

centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the

enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain

functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him

what comes to mind when he says the word " zebra " , you do not have to clumsily

sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an

answer. Instead, associations like " striped " , " horselike " , and " animal native to

Africa " all pop into your head instantly. Indeed, one of the most amazing things

about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems

instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another

feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is

infinitely interconnected with every other portion, it is perhaps nature's

supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes

more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is

how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via

the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete

world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a

hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a

translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies

into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses

holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives

through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. An impressive body

of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its

operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among

neurophysiologists. Argentinian-Italian researcher

Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of

acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of

sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear,

Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.

Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording

technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct " hard " reality by

relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of

experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to

a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected. Researchers

have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound

frequencies, that our sense of smellisin part dependent on what are now called

" osmic frequencies " , and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a

broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the

holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and

divided up into conventional perceptions.

But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is

what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if the concreteness

of the world is but a secondary reality and what is " there " is actually a

holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only

selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms

them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite

simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the

material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical

beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really " receivers " floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and

what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one

channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views,

has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists

have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing

group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality

science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some

mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish

the paranormal as a part of nature. Numerous researchers, including Bohm and

Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more

understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm.

In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of

the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may

merely be the accessing of the holographic level. It is obviously much easier to

understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of

individual 'B' at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of

unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Stanislav Grof feels the

holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling

phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness. In

the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a

psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became

convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric

reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly

detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a

form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species's anatomy was a

patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was startling to Grof was

that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation

with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored

areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual

arousal. The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his

research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with

virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped

influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he

found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details

which turned out to be accurate.

Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological

phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some

sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no

education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices

and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals

gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of

the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.

In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy

sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in

such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's

consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and

time, Grof called such manifestations " transpersonal experiences " , and in the

late '60s he helped found a branch of psychology called " transpersonal

psychology " devoted entirely to their study.

Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a

rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected

branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able

to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they

were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic

paradigm. As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a

labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has

existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and

time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the

labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.

The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like

biology. Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed

out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would

no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is

consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain -- as well as the body

and everything else around us we interpret as physical.

Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers

to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could

also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical

structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it

becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than

current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of

disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect

changes in the hologram of the body.

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work

so well because, in the holographic domain of thought, images are ultimately as

real as " reality " . Even visions and experiences involving, " non-ordinary "

reality, become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his book " Gifts

of Unknown Things, " biologist Lyall describes his encounter with an

Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an

entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. relates that as he

and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the

trees to reappear, then " click " off again and on again several times in

succession.

Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such

events, experiences like this become more tenable if " hard " reality is only a

holographic projection. Perhaps we agree on what is " there " or " not there "

because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level

of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected. If

this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of

all, for it means that experiences such as 's are not commonplace only

because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them

so. In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can

alter the fabric of reality.

What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any

picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the

mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters

with the Yaqui brujo don , for magic is our birthright, no more or less

miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our

dreams. Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect,

for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out,even random events

would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore

determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and

everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most

haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.

Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or

dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has

already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is

found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the

instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between

subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at

Birbeck College in London, Aspect's findings " indicate that we must be prepared

to consider radically new views of reality " . -:- ~-=-~ -:-

February 17, 2007

Holy moly, Sam!

That's a lot of type in that article! Have you been hanging out with Wallace?

You have both been quite busy! :-)

I think what Connie said has a lot in common with the Buhner material I

posted only, like Buhner said, the linguistics change.

I read your post, but need to go over it and think more about what you wrote.

I don't know if you've lost your marbles or not, but if I did think so, that

doesn't mean it would be so. I've been out all day and it's past my bedtime,

so I'd rather see if I might agree with your wife when I'm more awake :-). I

just hope that if you've lost your marbles, it's not contagious.

Buhner also talks a little (maybe a paragraph or two) about Pantheism in

" Sacred Plant Medicine " (the true definition, and the " mis-definition " ). I

haven't

read enough on the topic to expand on it. I'll put it on my list.

There are so many " languages " of religion/spirituality, etc., (Buhner refers

to " religious maps, " and that is another interesting concept in the book), and

now that diversity in humans has intermingled even further around the Earth,

it can be quite a challenge for us all to communicate. A friend of mine shared

recently that he's gotten very good at " translating. " I think that's wise,

and I'm working on it!

I know this all may seem quite " off topic, " but there is a connection for me.

As I continue to regain health while on Buhner's protocol, I am reconnecting

with people who have different " religious leanings " than I. My healing is

making this possible, though it is complicated at times. Anyway, Buhner's

protocol

has definitely helped bring me to this point in many ways.

I quickly skimmed the article you put in at the end of your post, but am

going read it more thoroughly later, when I can give it better attention. Thanks

for posting all this.

Relating to the protocol, my increase in brain clarity continues (i.e., very

little brain fog these days). And I realized that, in my worst brain fog days,

I got so used to being intimidated by long articles that I developed an

automatic reaction of feeling overwhelmed and thinking I'd never get through

them,

so I often didn't even try. My brain is working so much better these days! And

I've been reading books again and writing up a storm lately (offline). Thank

you Herbals! Thank you Buhner! Thank you, One and All.

Blessings,

Ann

p.s. I believe " God " would have to be transgender (though not neccessarily

like Divine in " Hairspray " ).

February 17, 2007

hi

i think your find that if you only have hearing in one ear you are unable to

know what direction sound is coming from.

JACO

[ ] Re: Buhner - language of plants - another

perspective

I believe that God did indeed create the

world and all that is within it to be deeply interconnected in

relationship (although I don't believe in praying to plants, I believe

it is God that gives the plants intelligence and the ability to heal

us). I am amazed, however, at how God has made everything so

wonderfully complex and precise, and how it's all been engineered to

work in concert together.

*****************************

What a wonderful exchange of thoughts, ideas and philosophies - I could spend

all day here soaking this in but just came to work to get water - geeez guys

thanks alot

Remember - this is only my pea-brained perspective of life.

If I may add just a bit to what Connie believes about God, which I totally

agree with, is that the the Almighty Creator made us in its own image, which

would carry us further to expound upon the fact that since we are His (or

whatever you may call Him, I personally think of THE one and only creator as

Jesus Christ) image, logic would follow that everything is interconnected

through God, not only the earth but the universe in its entirety, as well as the

most infinite sub-particle of space and time, not to mention the awsome

intelligenge He gave to plants and our interconnectedness to them. I also

believe that everything is so intertwined and connected that we are actually a

very small " hologram " of a much bigger picture, or larger hologram, if you will.

This is what I think God is, and to Him I give all the glory and praise for

creating such a wonderful, interconnected eternity of space and time, so

therefore I say, we (everything) are all one through the mighty Creator.

Concerning how wonderfully we are made is in and through His divine

providence. Everything is God breathed and it was formed by His infinite wisdom

and masterfully made through only His thoughts, which of course we will never

fathom all His mighty thoughts - ever. In other words He is " All that is " - the

Great " I am " . The article below is somewhat baffling, and confounding to say the

least, but it explains a lot of strange and even wonderful healings and

occurances etc., but it is what it is. Personally I think this giant hologram is

actually God in His entirety, of which His entirety is ever expounding and

growing, such as is the universe and all that is. Oh and btw, my wife thinks I

have lost ALL my marbles - she may be partially correct but she don't know of my

secret stash So sorry, but she, as well as you all, are connected to me and

vice-versa. Please read the very bottom of article concerning visualizations and

healing etc. Although it sounds very new-age, IMO

it is nothing short of the mighty power of God manifested in us and through

us, and is nothing new. Remember it is not we who have made ourselves or the

heavens or the plants, but ONLY God in His infinite wisdom. I also think you can

use this knowledge of understanding for good or evil - please pray that it be

for good and most importantly to His glory.

February 17, 2007

Hey Sam, Ann and Everyone,

Sam, Great post! I think your perspective is a lovely way of looking at God

and I think you and I have similar beliefs on this subject. (I didn't get to

the article at the bottom though as it's 1215 AM and I should already be

asleep! ;-)

I do think God reveals Himself (I say Himself because I'm used to relating to

God as my Father, though I believe He embodies both the female and male

gender),

to all Creation by different means, and that He makes himself known within the

hearts of all men.

Just an FYI, I respect everyone's right to believe as they choose, ( ie, Ann,

I think you offer quite an introspective perspective on the matter of faith--),

but for me, Jesus Christ has offered me the most complete revelation of God on

Earth, and this is based on my personal experience and what I believe to be

true about history.

I don't want to spark any kind of debate, either, just offer up my spiritual

side since we are on the subject...

Connie

Sam Horner <dudehorner@...> wrote:

I believe that God did indeed create the

world and all that is within it to be deeply interconnected in

relationship (although I don't believe in praying to plants, I believe

it is God that gives the plants intelligence and the ability to heal

us). I am amazed, however, at how God has made everything so

wonderfully complex and precise, and how it's all been engineered to

work in concert together.

*****************************

What a wonderful exchange of thoughts, ideas and philosophies - I could spend

all day here soaking this in but just came to work to get water - geeez guys

thanks alot

Remember - this is only my pea-brained perspective of life.

If I may add just a bit to what Connie believes about God, which I totally

agree with, is that the the Almighty Creator made us in its own image, which

would carry us further to expound upon the fact that since we are His (or

whatever you may call Him, I personally think of THE one and only creator as

Jesus Christ) image, logic would follow that everything is interconnected

through God, not only the earth but the universe in its entirety, as well as

the most infinite sub-particle of space and time, not to mention the awsome

intelligenge He gave to plants and our interconnectedness to them. I also

believe that everything is so intertwined and connected that we are actually a

very small " hologram " of a much bigger picture, or larger hologram, if you

will. This is what I think God is, and to Him I give all the glory and praise

for creating such a wonderful, interconnected eternity of space and time, so

therefore I say, we (everything) are all one through the

mighty Creator.

Concerning how wonderfully we are made is in and through His divine

providence. Everything is God breathed and it was formed by His infinite wisdom

and masterfully made through only His thoughts, which of course we will never

fathom all His mighty thoughts - ever. In other words He is " All that is " - the

Great " I am " . The article below is somewhat baffling, and confounding to say

the least, but it explains a lot of strange and even wonderful healings and

occurances etc., but it is what it is. Personally I think this giant hologram

is actually God in His entirety, of which His entirety is ever expounding and

growing, such as is the universe and all that is. Oh and btw, my wife thinks I

have lost ALL my marbles - she may be partially correct but she don't know of

my secret stash So sorry, but she, as well as you all, are connected to me

and vice-versa. Please read the very bottom of article concerning

visualizations and healing etc. Although it sounds very

new-age, IMO

it is nothing short of the mighty power of God manifested in us and through

us, and is nothing new. Remember it is not we who have made ourselves or the

heavens or the plants, but ONLY God in His infinite wisdom. I also think you

can use this knowledge of understanding for good or evil - please pray that it

be for good and most importantly to His glory.

Please understand, I am not posting this for debate but for just another

perpective to a huge plethora of ideas and thoughts, and thouroghly enjoy

reading post from all different perspectives.. Would love to hear SB speak at

upcoming retreat.

THE UNIVERSE AS A HOLOGRAM by Talbot

DOES OBJECTIVE REALITY EXIST? OR IS THE UNIVERSE A PHANTASM?

IN 1982 A REMARKABLE EVENT TOOK PLACE. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS A RESEARCH

TEAM LED BY PHYSICIST ALAIN ASPECT PERFORMED WHAT MAY TURN OUT TO BE ONE OF THE

MOST IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTS OF THE 20th CENTURY.

YOU DID NOT HEAR ABOUT IT ON THE EVENING NEWS. In fact, unless you are in the

habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard

Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the

face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic

particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each

other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether

they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems

to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates

Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the

speed of light.{Speed of light broken } Since traveling faster than the speed

of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has

caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away

Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical

explanations.

University of London physicist Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's

findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent

solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly

detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first

understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional

photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be

photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser

beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting

interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured

on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light

and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another

laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable

characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then

illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire

image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet

of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the

original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains

all the information possessed by the whole.

The " whole in every part " nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely

new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history,

Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a

physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its

respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may

not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something

constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we

will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's

discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in

contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not

because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but

because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level

of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually

extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following

illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are

unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it

contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's

front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television

monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate

entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of

the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two

fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship

between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but

corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the

side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even

conclude that the fish must be

instantaneously communicating

with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic

particles in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent

faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us

that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex

dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we

view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because

we are seeing only a portion of their reality. Such particles are not separate

" parts " , but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as

holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since

everything in physical reality is comprised of these " eidolons " , the universe

is itself a projection, a hologram.