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This is an interesting question. One of the first things Bardon teaches is to bless a meal and eat consciously, using it as a symbol for fortifying yourself with a virtue. In other words his idea is to use it for transformation. A book recently came out called 'Self-Hypnosis Revolution' by a man named Forbes Robbins Blair -- who is also a practitioner. This expands the idea to include eating, drinking, walking, and any of about a hundred other daily activities. These can act as symbols for seeding your subconscious with self change. I mention that book because it really got results for me in terms of self-change, quick results. I've used it constantly over the last couple of months and I will probably do so for the rest of my life. The principle comes from the author's experience in dream interpretation. If taking a shower in a dream can represent cleansing negativity, then taking a physical shower can represent the same thing in a conscious manner. This is what Bardonists use meals for -- it's a kind of 'prayer' to fortify oneself. I was very surprised how well this worked as I'd played in that area for ages. This skyrocketted the results. http://www.amazon.com/Self-Hypnosis-Revolu...4008&sr=1-1 (Not a normal 'self-hypnosis' book since no trance is involved BTW). All best wishes, ~NeutralWire~

1) I have had dreams that are just plain thought residue from the day. 2) I have had dreams that tell of event ahead of time pretty good and they are not the self forfilled type. 3) I knew a wiccan that pulled me into her dream once. She called it dreamscaping and what was even more cool we I woke up I told her nothing and asked her what happened and she verified it but I still don't know how she did it. 4) I have astral projected once durning sleep but I got alittle scared which to my surpise turned me the opposite direction and I woke up. My first and only time concously attempting it every time I thought I want to go here or there I was instantly there which was really frustating. When I returned to my body I went to go verify that it indead happened with a family member I was observing and she verified it. From both these experiences I concluded the calmer the mind is the easier it will be to move in an astral state. The only problem its hard to get any practice if you only did it twice and you can not reproduce the event effectively. 5) I have had very spiritual dreams that have helped to understand the Tao better. There very vived dreams and what is said is usually very brief but very powerful and life changing.

We could intend him back, and then i'm sure he'll be back in one shape or another For example, we can do it in the following way--through the strategy called Exmining Intent: one strives examine all of his words and actions to see what is the underlying intent behind them. Are they stemming from the "me", from the ego with it's desperate desire to divide and appear "exclusive" and "superior" or from the heart in mood of friendliness and including others? If one does this, they say, the multitude of their words and acts form a cohesive intent and the collective positive mood gains integrity... i think like this we can create nice atmosphere where we can communicate and support eachother. * * * Here is one more video from the same energy practitioner. Basiacally (from my rusty russian comprehension) he has opened channels, spent time to move a sellection of energy ("ball") trough the channels by will, then connects with the "firy" forces in the univers, summons them while projecting a very focussed Intended image of the final result on the object he affects. He insists that he doesn't use his own energy but orders the firypart of the universe to do it. Gets tired in a while and needs to recharge. The key thing is: one needs to bring in the game the Energy Body, and the enrgy body comes only through opened centers and without the Energy Twin there is nothing, and the Dream Body doesn't come if one hasn't cultivated a very palpable and stable ability and bulk of Inner Silence. This, you may know better than me, is because what keeps our Energetic Twin appart is the incessant flow of energy the way it circulates to form the "everiday-life" view of the world: which is mostly the head and the inner dialogue, a view of selfreflection. To interrupt this dialogue is to disrupt this flow and to redirect it, thus creating space for the Enrgy Body to pop in. It only waits a moment of silence and there you are: suddenly you feel its gentle tingling in and around you... My point is: all these give us so much "material" for months of delicious practice and if we don't do this practice no "master" can help us or transport us to awareness You may guess it but these type of evolution starts to happen just about everywhere and some are worried that fluoride in the water and mercury vaxines won't hold this welling wave too long for CRITICALL MASS is growing by the hour and the monkeys are somewhat more than 100 now... Have you ever thought what a little Puckered-Lips-Capricious-Prince-Poop-Studied-with15bestMasters-specialsecret-Foundation-Clown would do if we are all interconnected in (for lack of better word) telepathy--hahaha What is amasing is that they go to learn from Pak John the "exclusive" stuff, the stuff that will give them illusion of being "exclusive" beings compared to the other, but they don't learn the egoless humblness and kindness of this beautiful being! The fact is that WE ARE CONNECTED and our ego's stand on the way to this connection to come to life! and we start to claim the awareness of this alive link... anyways, the little video here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hnfkl5

This is my first post on this forum. I came across it apparently quite by accident while searching out an entirely unrelated topic on the web. Anyway, in this lobby the expected thing to do seems to be to introduce oneself, so, 'when in Rome',... Since my early twenties, I've been increasingly drawn to trying to either understand, or experience, the hopeful 'reality' behind my conviction that everything that exists is spiritual. My current beliefs are that it is only some kid of mis-perception by our human mind that prevents most of us from seeing, or experiencing that awareness. To my eternal frustration, I have not yet had so much as a glimpse of what is often called a "realisation", with which to confirm my beliefs. The closest resemblance I have to any tangible support to hold on to are the intriguing chains of spiritual logic that I find myself drawn to. But whenever I look closely into them,... they're about as substantial as clinging to a rainbow. Those chains of logic have often enough changed and gone off in different directions over the 35 years or so since I first noticed my attraction to them. The strongest, longest-lasting, and most recent was a 20 year connection with a very worldly-successful, Western Mahayana Buddhist group. However, recently I have irrevocably split from that path. My feelings are that, (in an oft-recurring tale), they were 'victims of their own success'. I think that with groups striving for Buddha, or God-like perfection,... very often the shimmering attraction of their mind-created dream makes them forget that their feet of clay are firmly here with all the rest of us living beings. Very often, that ever-present subtle delusion of spiritual pride slowly cuts them off from the genuine compassion for others which had initially given their original founding members such seemingly un-stoppable vigour. But as my personal connection with Buddhism was in the process of breaking down, I was extremely fortunate in that I made connection with another non-methodoligical spiritual path,... Advaita. In conjunction with Zen and Taoism, I believe they are the only three major pathways that practice the 'method of no method'. After my experiences with the spiritual bureaucracy of a large Western Buddhist organisation, I am very, very drawn to a spiritual path with NO doctrine, NO dogma, and NO special, intermediary, priveledged collection of priests. Anyway, there's my situation in a rather long-winded nutshell, (if I may be allowed to so mix my metaphors) The title I used for this intro is because of the frustration I am experiencing trying to load an avatar image onto this forum. Perhaps someone can help me with some purely technical information ? (I am not very computer literate). I have used this photo from my own computer before as an avatar so I know it works. But on this forum, it gets squished and distorted into a square that it says is 125 by 125. The image I want to use is 416 X 300, a JPEG, and 16.1 KB. I have seen many beautiful, interesting and complex avatars on this site, so I know I am missing some basic steps in the process. Undoubtedly, that is why I keep ending up with this squished, distorted and thoroughly unsatifactory image. (Perhaps it's a parallel for my spiritual endeavours !!) Can any one help me with some basic computer advice ?? Spiritual matters later.

Jim, thank you for your presence and gentle generosity! share please about what ways do you use to submerge items in Yin field, i'm sure everyone will find it interesting. Some do it by sheer intending, others (as in the clip below) "suck off" grabbing and inhaling prior to projecting the Yang so that they would put a momentary stress in the unfiformity of the fabric of the vibratory force that holds energeticaly things together. This "vaccum"/stress is probably filled with the practitioners' dream-body (Yin body) field for the purpose...that's hwta it looks like: like this?(see clip below, a energy practitioner from Kazahstan, if i'm not mistaken): http://rutube.ru/tracks/964413.html?v=18ca...efafdee07e0020e * * *

"Beyond thinking, beyond body, you exist. This is easy to see: Simply close your eyes and notice your experience beyond thought. Stop thinking for a second or two and notice what is here. You will realize you still exist, without definition, without description, without limitation, separation or conflict. It is the identification with the thinking 'I' that causes all of the trouble. All of your problems worries and desires are about this thinking 'I.' But what is this 'I' with problems to solve? Does this 'I' exist beyond the idea of it? Is there really a you that you define by a memory of a past and an anticipation of a future? Beyond thought, does this 'I' exist? You assume it does, because you choose to identify with thinking. But if you look to validate it's authenticity beyond thought, it is not here. The moment you bring your attention to the experience of existing in this very moment, you are free of this thought of 'I'. You rest as awareness itself. Meditation is the means to break this habit of constantly identifying with this thinking 'I.' Because once you wake up from a dream that you were being chased by a monster, you don't have to run anymore. Blessings, Kip" How to Be Blissful For Free Teachings on Meditation & Awareness Visit the How to Become Awakened Website

Use reality checks to induce lucidity backsnaps Use still meditation to check mind at the station b4 falling behind your sleeping self less you snapbacks This is a portal to many realms mental spiritual dream land vibratory states peircing the veils movement as thought as movement 360 degrees up is up down is down side ways play

Hear Here. Give the man a cigar on not getting sidetracked from the central focus of ALL taoist practices in either still or moving meditation, that of WUJI... and from what i've seen I agree with you. There are charactaristics to balanced movements that are universal. Taiji and chi gung are no exception. I recently posted a bow sim mark video up in trucks bday thread that impressed me with a centralized movement of the dantien that is easy to see. A;sp check heck out Bing in L.A. www.youtube.com/wudangbing I'm going to visit him this month. I had this funny dream I went down there and was hanging in a park w/ him and his students practicing our chuan and he was like smoking cigerretes and had this look in his eye... The thing is when you take what has manifested even in a breif moment finding "wuji" and apply that to a form of movement, or a weapon, dude... you fly... imagine finding wuji in every movement, floating... so sick... there are some who do it better than others, in absolulte movement we find stillness, in absolute stillness we find fine ass movement...

<sigh> 220 Freedom from... ones own.... (he's not sure) 240 control reality to the degree you can control your own mind (sidhi) 620 original circuits 825 true breathing 955 mitowowow friends 1108 it FEELS 1128 electromagnetic dynamo 1150 they don't teach this. (maybe not where you been) 1300 bindus 1355 stabilization of clear and open (he does not address keeping them open through practice DUH) 1640 emptispace is everywhere, lets hero worship some more 1700 "our"training 1710 thats right you should cough when you say that 1730 white people asking those questions 1750 hit it again 1925 finally talking about something worthwhile the zero and the one 2023 universal definations 2040 kunlun mentioned 2100 merging dualitites from sides to central. not unique to kunlun. 2114 unifying bliss and emptiness 2122 amature 2130 like your doing right now? 2148 reabsorbing projections? (illusions are dispelled the mind is set free) 2157 the opening of... what time is it? 2222 awake awaken wake. normally asleep until that moment when... what... where... 2238 reset. practice. grow. reformat. change program, transmissions 2304 center is key. 2323 no complicated manuvers. 2340 cultivations of original circuits 2400 kundalini is only ONE frequency. many frequencies in the spectrum 2422 white people always getting hung up on the power sex thing juar can't let go, fix the hair. 2444 primarilly energetic... not physical... 2530 bull shit on needing the transmission 2614 emotional circuits mind letting go of ALL outcomes 3232 cascading .... moving up and down sidhis seekers "control" the dream 3356 fingers

Well in some places I've read, they said that one ways to have an OBE is to start flying in a lucid dream, then fly up and up and up as high as you can go. So that to me sounds like lucid dreams are mostly you in your mind, but you can leave if you want. Set up a sign for yourself to kinda give you that "'ahh I m dreaming" message. What works for me is that as I go to "sleep" I'm aware that I am in bed, so if I find myself somewhere other than in bed it clicks " I m in bed, this isnt my bed so I must be dreaming" Another thing is to keep a journal of your dreams (or if you have good dream recall, you might not need this) and to familiarize yourself with common elements in your dreams. Like maybe buildings take on a physically impossible shape, you are unable to move when you want (or need) to, etc. As you notice these, the next time it happens you can use that as a hint, thinking, "oh yeah, I always have trouble walking in my dreams.... hey!"

Lucid dreams are awesome! Though I still fight with the OBE or Lucid dream question, or maybe even a mixture of both? Set up a sign for yourself to kinda give you that "'ahh I m dreaming" message. What works for me is that as I go to "sleep" I'm aware that I am in bed, so if I find myself somewhere other than in bed it clicks " I m in bed, this isnt my bed so I must be dreaming" As for OBEs ( I think,but not 100% sure) what I do is lay down, relax and just quiet the mind, not forcefully though, if thoughts come let them just pass by at their own time, but dont focus on them. Don't fall asleep, just try to keep aware. After a while you'll feel vibes through your body, shortly after that moment what I do is roll to the side, and I m out ( I think ). Not matter what it is it's AWESOME! I just love t fly around, I feel like so happy the next morning

Yes I have had it once.I falled asleep after a deep mantra meditation.It was unfortunatly very short.So much I would like to do,haha.It was like a dream but I was "awake " and could control the dream.Felt Like real time.I started doing anapanasati meditation right after and havent had it since

Well, I practice Taoist Dream Yoga, which is similar to, but different from Lucid Dreaming. Unfortunely< I have never had a great deal of sucess with it. I can never seem to make the transition from being in a dream state to being aware, I'm actually in a dream state. I think I always get too excited, at the point where, I become aware I'm in a dream state and then wake up. So I would say calmness plays a big part. The few times I have made it work, I have found it to be very productive. I would love to be able to do it consistently, and be able to work on things during the hours which, I am sleeping. Bu

Well there are different levels to lucidity. In the basic levels you mostly go, "huh, this is a dream, let's walk over here...." and that's as much as you do. In others you can fly, move about, and manifest different things in front of you. Sufficed to say, the level in which you are totally aware and can manifest anything takes quite a bit of awareness and practice, and that's also the level in which (I would suppose) you are most successful in spiritual practice. Like some websites are just like, "once you go lucid, ask to meet your guide" or something like that, claiming that you should start to come in contact with various things almost immediately. Same with meeting aspects of your personality, like maybe you have a phobia, you can confront and overcome that in a dream. The three times I've tried, I didn't get anything (at least nowhere near advertised results). Doing some more digging and talking to some people on other specialized forums, the general consensus is that even if you can GET lucid, that doesn't mean you are totally aware, there are still large parts of your unconscious that is still in control, and a lot of things that prevent you from reaching any sort of higher level accomplishment, so it takes practice to get to a higher degree of lucidity before you start anything. So some places suggest that you meditate once you become lucid, so you train to increase your awareness in the "dream world", so you can gain more control, so your subconscious still doesn't have that hold over you, and you can work through mental blocks and stuff like that. Sufficed to say, one of the next things on my to do list is basically, before jumping into anything "too advanced", to just try and keep more awareness and control in general. But I was wondering if anyone else had any experience/tips they'd like to share.

I imagine you would have to have a fairly calm mind to be able to lucid dream effectively. I sometimes wonder if I would freak out or not if I ever became lucid in a dream. I'm interested in the responses... it's a very fascinating topic!

I'm sure you know this and I wasn't going to post.... but you never know. Network Network Network. I've never got a job from an advert in the paper. It's always been through people I know. Friends in large organizations (like a hospital ) can let you know what jobs are coming up and how to apply "correctly" to get one. Qhealth always has operational jobs (unskilled manual work) available, but it can be hard to land the permenant ones. Most of us get in by being casual first and only get the full time ones if we "Get on" with people. Friends in small business will almost always be looking for a good worker, or know someone who is. Do anything (pretty much) to get some cash. Then you can eat while you harass people for your dream job. You are in Brisbane, yes?

Reconciling life and death, How do you do it? Be around it. In all that it is. As much as you can handle. Takes practice, you know, what one can handle? Life and death (which is the same. just as rain is ocean is tears is water. The same.) It's strange how so many people are so far removed from both? To hold a baby, to sit with a grandmother, be it a baby puppy or a cranky old man sitting an a bench, I think these things are important? Evan an hour a week, would bring so many folks into closer contact with Life. Take the time to be around it. See life coming into the world. Plant a garden and watch it grow, pull the weeds, enjoy the fruits, compost! lol feel the dirt under your fingernails! It's good you know? To be alive? To be a part of the cycles of life. How many people never have held a baby, fed it or changed a diaper. ... or pet the forehead of someone who may not see another sunrise. Become a volunteer at hospice. It's always so needed, there are so many who don't have anyone to sit with them. Life is dirty, we try to keep it clean and sterile, we buy our chicken wrapped in plastic and never see the life it was or bother to give thanks in any way? Find a farmer tell him you are interested in helping out if you could come "time". Get your hands dirty with life. Know it as intimately as your soul is able. As for folks that don't dream I know some who don't dream?(or so they say) They are as troubled by the questions of life as much as anyone else. I have some strange beliefs. I believe anyone who drives should be able to build a car (yet, i can't!) I also believe anyone who alive should know what it is that goes into keeping them alive. If you eat a chicken you should be able to know well the egg that was laid and hatched the chick that grew into this chicken and you should also know how it feels to break it's neck. This is your food it was alive. Grow lettuce. Or an apple tree. or make bread. Know what's involved for you to keep breathing. Don't be so disconnected that you think You are the only living thing on this planet Like so many seem to think or at least how they act. (my "you" in all this is a generic you and not intended to be directed at any individual by the way!) Enjoy life! Don't worry, It's a sure thing. We are going to be dead all to soon. Me. You. Every friend. Any enemy. Cat Dog and Bird. Mother, father, stranger, cousin. No matter how long, in the scheme of things, it's not so far away. Lot's a choices to be made within every moment. Chose wisely if you can, and love it as best as able. enjoy life while we can keep breathing. Such a complex simplicity? Thank you for asking and reminding Shonton Ga

O.K. yesterday I went to Walgreens pharmacy and I found three different garlic oil capsules for sale, plus 3 different tablets. The highest allicin concentration claim was HALF of what the above garlic oil capsules claim. And based on that half highest it was still claimed that it took two to three oil capsules to be the equivalent of one clove of fresh garlic. So the 250 cloves of garlic claim is not accurate. Then I did a price comparison of fresh garlic to the odorless capsules and I figured it was a fairly equivalent price (compared to higher quality garlic -- I can get cheap garlic at 5 bulbs for a $1 but high grade is two bulbs for a $1). So then I bought two bottles of capsules -- at $7 each. I then immediately tried some capsules outside the store -- they killed off the rotten egg hydrogen sulfide smell from my previous fresh garlic which was a good start. The question remained would the garlic oil capsules kill off the bacteria from sugar? I can't smell the bacteria but I can feel it in my brain and leaching through my gums and nose, etc. -- from sitting in full-lotus -- it's a kind of tingling sensation (proprioreception). My coworkers and friends will definitely tell me when they can smell it! haha. So then I went to the grocery by my house -- I bought a box of donuts plus two bulbs of fresh high quality garlic (and some cleaning supplies for fresh smell -- vinegar and borax). I ate all the chocolate donuts in the box -- but couldn't finish the bad donuts left (a glazed, and some pastry). I also ate the two bulbs of fresh garlic at the same time. I was sitting in full-lotus the whole time while reading or watching a movie. I also had yogurt and an orange. I was down to one clove of fresh garlic left -- but there was still some bacteria left-over being leached through the brain and my gums and nose. So then I went into the garlic capsules to see if they would kill it off. I kept chewing the capsules to release the allicin in my mouth and to get it up into my brain -- via the full-lotus. The capsule were MAINLY SOY OIL -- and were ineffective against the bacteria. I ATE THE WHOLE BOTTLE OF GARLIC OIL CAPSULES IN ONE SITTING -- 100 capsules. Then I remembered that allicin is actually to lower the cholesterol -- as advertised on the garlic oil capsule bottles. Again it's the sulfuric acid which kills the bacteria and then the sulfur compounds kill the enzymes which the bacteria feed off of. That's why fresh garlic remains the real choice. My heart rate remained good but I was suspicious about the tingling in my hands and wrists. Then I realized it was from the borax I had used to clean my place. Nevertheless I kept sitting in full-lotus much longer than usual just to make sure my blood wasn't too thin from all the allicin. I was in full-lotus till about 2 a.m. or maybe 3 a.m. I just had bad garlic gas and then woke up again to "ye old perv" in the bathroom directly behind my head about 5 feet -- he was sucking up the electromagnetic energy in my brain. I realized that's why I was having this nice erotic dream.

Well, let's just keep the dream alive and it'll happen someone somehow sometime. No rush.

on the subject of ruining sleep. the first night i had a dreams about an japanese airline stewardess talking to me. but what she was saying didnt make any sense, as her sentences would stop at seemingly random times. then i woke up. the room was eerily lighted by the sky outside but the voice from the dream wasnt stopping. then i realized that it was the japanese lessions. the way i find most effective when learning is using taichi principles of just letting the information pass through you. I will use tamos cave meditation to supplement the learning i suppose. Maybe i should try sleeping on books. It seems like it would be a useful method if it worked. Im not concentrating on kanji just yet. im currently working on the speaking and listening part.

somebody's so uptight it's like a DREAM! *bows* must gratefully whats with those moves anyway I do them ever so often? is is the wig, I wonderl?

I've had many series of nightmares where I see people die and their soul is half conscious and retarded like an undeveloped child, just wandering around not aware, just like the dream mind being thrust into the real world. I see these souls picked up and devoured by other beings. Not sure if these are just nightmares but I hope so.

DarinHamel It is the desire for power that will hold you back. What have you found in your daoist studies about attachment? This is an honest question because I only read translations, and no that many of them either. What I have read suggests being in a desireless state, not prefering one thing over another, being in balance and harmony with what is (the dao) is "the way". I am not without money or power by the way, so I not fit your stereotype. Without attachment, things go pretty well it seems to me. I percieve a need. I use energy or money to fulfill it. Great. No biggie. No attachment. If I don't have enough, then I could dream up a way, a plan, to achieve it. Great. No problem. If it is beyond anything I can dream up, then it is accepted as it is, possibly studied with other plans forthcoming..... This is the natural way, yes?

It's just like being a little kid on a playground at recess... You can be enjoying your swing..."ahhh so peaceful swinging on my swing! It's so much fun to feel that weightlessness when I reach the top! Woo hoo..." Then the class bully comes along and pushes you off. You go flying, and your face hits the woodchips with a crack! OUCH. You start to bleed and cry, while he laughs at you. You curl up into the fetal position and pray to whatever higher power will listen that the world would be fair. ...Then your hero comes along. Your best friend, Billy! He takes a swing at the bully - knocking him to the ground. The bully starts crying and runs away with a red face. Billy yells out, "Don't mess with my friend, baloneyx, again!" He comes and helps you up and suggests that you swing together. So much fun again! Brotherly love fills your heart and you're so grateful to have a good friend who will stick up for you. From that point on, the bully avoids you because he knows what will happen...he sees that dangerous look in Billy's eye anytime he looks in your direction. If Billy wasn't there, the bully could mess with you at anytime. You could be eating lunch and all of a sudden a basketball could fly into your head, and your meal would fall all over your clothes and on the floor. You could be sleeping at night and the bully would throw a rock into your window, breaking your favorite transformers toy! You would have to live your whole life in fear...but since your friend Billy is there, you can enjoy your meal. Yum. You can sleep peacefully and dream of the hottest girl in your grade inviting you over for baloney and ketchup sandwiches. And then when you wake up, you can play imaginary war with your transformers. ... So despite the world being a messed up place where evil people run the show and lie to the public about why wars are fought...I think it's good to honor the "Billys" who decided to be vigilant and give up their freedom and peace so that you can have yours. Because it's very true that they are the reason why you're sitting on the internet talking about how much they suck. The way I see it, until people learn some respect we can't call ourselves a civilized society. Have fun, kids.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2012...ram.html?page=1 DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres. For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century. For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan. If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level. The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface. The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true. Susskind and 't Hooft's remarkable idea was motivated by ground-breaking work on black holes by Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge. In the mid-1970s, Hawking showed that black holes are in fact not entirely "black" but instead slowly emit radiation, which causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox. Bekenstein's work provided an important clue in resolving the paradox. He discovered that a black hole's entropy - which is synonymous with its information content - is proportional to the surface area of its event horizon. This is the theoretical surface that cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for infalling matter or light. Theorists have since shown that microscopic quantum ripples at the event horizon can encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss as the black hole evaporates. Crucially, this provides a deep physical insight: the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram. Susskind and 't Hooft extended the insight to the universe as a whole on the basis that the cosmos has a horizon too - the boundary from beyond which light has not had time to reach us in the 13.7-billion-year lifespan of the universe. What's more, work by several string theorists, most notably Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has confirmed that the idea is on the right track. He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary. According to Hogan, the holographic principle radically changes our picture of space-time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10-35 metres. The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be discernable. That is, not until Hogan realised that the holographic principle changes everything. If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe. Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. "Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry," says Hogan. This is good news for anyone trying to probe the smallest unit of space-time. "Contrary to all expectations, it brings its microscopic quantum structure within reach of current experiments," says Hogan. So while the Planck length is too small for experiments to detect, the holographic "projection" of that graininess could be much, much larger, at around 10-16 metres. "If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the blurring," he says. When Hogan first realised this, he wondered if any experiment might be able to detect the holographic blurriness of space-time. That's where GEO600 comes in. Gravitational wave detectors like GEO600 are essentially fantastically sensitive rulers. The idea is that if a gravitational wave passes through GEO600, it will alternately stretch space in one direction and squeeze it in another. To measure this, the GEO600 team fires a single laser through a half-silvered mirror called a beam splitter. This divides the light into two beams, which pass down the instrument's 600-metre perpendicular arms and bounce back again. The returning light beams merge together at the beam splitter and create an interference pattern of light and dark regions where the light waves either cancel out or reinforce each other. Any shift in the position of those regions tells you that the relative lengths of the arms has changed. "The key thing is that such experiments are sensitive to changes in the length of the rulers that are far smaller than the diameter of a proton," says Hogan. So would they be able to detect a holographic projection of grainy space-time? Of the five gravitational wave detectors around the world, Hogan realised that the Anglo-German GEO600 experiment ought to be the most sensitive to what he had in mind. He predicted that if the experiment's beam splitter is buffeted by the quantum convulsions of space-time, this will show up in its measurements (Physical Review D, vol 77, p 104031). "This random jitter would cause noise in the laser light signal," says Hogan. In June he sent his prediction to the GEO600 team. "Incredibly, I discovered that the experiment was picking up unexpected noise," says Hogan. GEO600's principal investigator Karsten Danzmann of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, and also the University of Hanover, admits that the excess noise, with frequencies of between 300 and 1500 hertz, had been bothering the team for a long time. He replied to Hogan and sent him a plot of the noise. "It looked exactly the same as my prediction," says Hogan. "It was as if the beam splitter had an extra sideways jitter." Incredibly, the experiment was picking up unexpected noise - as if quantum convulsions were causing an extra sideways jitter No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live in a holographic universe. It is far too soon to say. "There could still be a mundane source of the noise," Hogan admits. Gravitational-wave detectors are extremely sensitive, so those who operate them have to work harder than most to rule out noise. They have to take into account passing clouds, distant traffic, seismological rumbles and many, many other sources that could mask a real signal. "The daily business of improving the sensitivity of these experiments always throws up some excess noise," says Danzmann. "We work to identify its cause, get rid of it and tackle the next source of excess noise." At present there are no clear candidate sources for the noise GEO600 is experiencing. "In this respect I would consider the present situation unpleasant, but not really worrying." For a while, the GEO600 team thought the noise Hogan was interested in was caused by fluctuations in temperature across the beam splitter. However, the team worked out that this could account for only one-third of the noise at most. Danzmann says several planned upgrades should improve the sensitivity of GEO600 and eliminate some possible experimental sources of excess noise. "If the noise remains where it is now after these measures, then we have to think again," he says. If GEO600 really has discovered holographic noise from quantum convulsions of space-time, then it presents a double-edged sword for gravitational wave researchers. One on hand, the noise will handicap their attempts to detect gravitational waves. On the other, it could represent an even more fundamental discovery. Such a situation would not be unprecedented in physics. Giant detectors built to look for a hypothetical form of radioactivity in which protons decay never found such a thing. Instead, they discovered that neutrinos can change from one type into another - arguably more important because it could tell us how the universe came to be filled with matter and not antimatter (New Scientist, 12 April 2008, p 26). It would be ironic if an instrument built to detect something as vast as astrophysical sources of gravitational waves inadvertently detected the minuscule graininess of space-time. "Speaking as a fundamental physicist, I see discovering holographic noise as far more interesting," says Hogan. Small price to pay Despite the fact that if Hogan is right, and holographic noise will spoil GEO600's ability to detect gravitational waves, Danzmann is upbeat. "Even if it limits GEO600's sensitivity in some frequency range, it would be a price we would be happy to pay in return for the first detection of the graininess of space-time." he says. "You bet we would be pleased. It would be one of the most remarkable discoveries in a long time." However Danzmann is cautious about Hogan's proposal and believes more theoretical work needs to be done. "It's intriguing," he says. "But it's not really a theory yet, more just an idea." Like many others, Danzmann agrees it is too early to make any definitive claims. "Let's wait and see," he says. "We think it's at least a year too early to get excited." The longer the puzzle remains, however, the stronger the motivation becomes to build a dedicated instrument to probe holographic noise. John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle agrees. It was a "lucky accident" that Hogan's predictions could be connected to the GEO600 experiment, he says. "It seems clear that much better experimental investigations could be mounted if they were focused specifically on the measurement and characterisation of holographic noise and related phenomena." One possibility, according to Hogan, would be to use a device called an atom interferometer. These operate using the same principle as laser-based detectors but use beams made of ultracold atoms rather than laser light. Because atoms can behave as waves with a much smaller wavelength than light, atom interferometers are significantly smaller and therefore cheaper to build than their gravitational-wave-detector counterparts. So what would it mean it if holographic noise has been found? Cramer likens it to the discovery of unexpected noise by an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964. That noise turned out to be the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang fireball. "Not only did it earn Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson a Nobel prize, but it confirmed the big bang and opened up a whole field of cosmology," says Cramer. Hogan is more specific. "Forget Quantum of Solace, we would have directly observed the quantum of time," says Hogan. "It's the smallest possible interval of time - the Planck length divided by the speed of light." More importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town. "Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising gravity that have a strong connection to string theory," says Cramer. "Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced." Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do - including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. "Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory." As serendipitous discoveries go, it's hard to get more ground-breaking than that. Marcus Chown is the author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You (Faber, 2008)