PRIBRAM X MAYA

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As a leading neuroscientist who collaborated with physicist David Bohm on the Holographic Brain Theory and the Implicate Order, Karl Pribram's quotes often challenge the conventional view of consciousness as purely an outcome of brain processes.

Here are some of his key quotes and related statements on consciousness:

On the Holographic Nature of Reality and Perception

• "Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe."¹²

  • Interpretation: This is the core statement of the Pribram-Bohm Hypothesis, suggesting that the physical world we perceive (the Explicate Order) is a three-dimensional projection transformed from a deeper, frequency-based realm (the Implicate Order).³

• "Was it possible, he wondered, that what the mystics had been saying for centuries was true, reality was maya, an illusion, and what was out there was really a vast, resonating symphony of wave forms, a 'frequency domain' that was transformed into the world as we know it only after it entered our se⁴nses?"⁵

  • Interpretation: While the question form is from a biographer, it captures Pribram's radical idea that the brain's function is fundamentally that of a frequency analyzer, translating a non-spatial, wave-based reality into our concrete experience of space and time.⁶

On the Brain's Role in Consciousness

• "The brain simply decodes [consciousness] for our body to use."⁷

  • Interpretation: This contrasts with the materialist view that the brain produces consciousness. Pribram often viewed the brain as a complex transceiver—a receiver and transmitter—rather than the sole source of consciousness or memory.⁸

• "The more he studies the brain and its functions, the more he feels that there may well be something outside the brain that accounts for its activity and capacity!"⁹

  • Interpretation: This reflects his struggle with the immense, non-local capacity of memory and function in the brain, which holography helped explain, but which suggested a source of information greater than the brain itself.¹⁰

On the Scientific Study of Consciousness

• "For the first time in three hundred years science is admitting spiritual values into its explorations."¹¹

  • Interpretation: This highlights his belief that the holographic/quantum view of reality forces science to reintegrate traditionally "spiritual" or holistic concepts, like universal interconnectedness, back into its domain.

• "My stance is that subjectivity, conscious experience, exists as the starting point for all inquiry."¹²

  • Interpretation: Pribram argued that conscious experience is the primary given fact of existence, and that understanding is achieved through "progressive objectification," challenging the notion that consciousness is merely the difficult, unsolved end product of purely physical processes.