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A participant in our Socrates Café discussion group recently sent me an email that included the following observation:

"There are in fact, layers to truth. People tend to see things in black and white, but a three dimensional image comes into view when the layers overlap in shades of grey. Truth is a like a hologram. Images layered upon images, that seem to shift, or morph when viewed from different dimensions."  

Hopefully, my response will be of interest:

First, there are many physicists and information theorists who contend that "information sits at the core of physics" and some go further to contend that "information is fundamental" to everything. Because this "it form bit" hypothesis is closely associated with the holographic view of reality, your comments resonated with me in the context of a paper on consciousness that I have been working on. 

See: https://www.academia.edu/s/7a42b01e12  or https://www.facebook.com/download/570376169767017/CONSCIOUSNESS - The Physics of Intentionality and Prayer.pdf

Although my paper was intended to present a scientifically plausible model for consciousness, I also used the imagery of transmissive volume holograms as an illustrative analogy for the paper's physics.  And, although the following describes a increasingly differentiated and particularized hierarchy as emanations of an undifferentiated Primal "Thought", the same processes would apply if I had used "light", "truth" or "reality" in the description. 

A MEDITATION FROM THE METAPHYSICAL

We will call the starting point for this meditation the "First" or "Primal" Thought. From the frame of reference of religious believers, it would be the Divine Thought which, having been thought, would be eternal. Also, as the Divine Thought, it could not be exclusive of any other Divine Thought. Therefore, from this Primal Thought, one might imagine additional thoughts subsumed within the first Thought as its necessary predicates. If so, I contend that I have described "the Primal Thought" as a state which is in superposition of all harmonious thoughts that may be subsumed within the initial Thought. If so, and if the principles of quantum mechanics were to also apply, would not all of the subsumed Thoughts necessarily emerge from the Primal Thought. Those Thoughts which are eternal and unchanging might then be referred to as the names and attributes of God and cumulatively be called the "Word of God". And, should one thought, if actualized, conflict with the actualization of any other thought, all such conflicting thoughts might be understood to eternally exist in contingency to each other. If so, all such Thoughts might additionally be understood to comprise a continuum of thought as greater and greater particularity emerges.

I propose that this continuum of thought may be seen as roughly analogous to a series of transmissive holograms which takes the light from all prior holograms and at each stage draws out and makes apprehendable some of the not yet expressed "thoughts" that were still subsumed within the thought being transmitted. No possible thought consistent with or subsumed within the Primal Thought could remain unthought.  However, some thoughts might find potential manifestation in extension given one set of Natural Laws (physics) and other "thoughts" might only be potentially manifest as extension if the Natural Laws were different. (Here I would contend that all possible universes which might be derived from the First Thought would of necessity arise in extension.) Now, within the set of all possible Thoughts which might potentially become actualized within the extension of our universe would be thoughts that might become manifest in extension only if other thoughts did not become manifest. (If so, it would be reasonable to assume that there must be a multiplicity of universes with Natural Laws like our own.) I would also contend that although all such thoughts must be eternal, that as these Thoughts embody greater and greater particularity, they engage in increasing degrees of interplay with "what is" in the determination of what next will be.

I should emphasize that the transmissive holograms I have described here were only an illustrative analogy to describe a process which begins with an initial quantum state and facilitates the emergence of increasing differentiation and particularization in a hierarchy where corporeality is at the bottom.  Since any information, including thoughts, can be encoded in the light, I felt the hologram could serve as a reasonable analogy.  Also, theology, philosophy, and now physics (the Holographic Universe) have used light related imagery in their descriptions of creation; to include the physicist, David Bohm, who called matter "frozen light"

With this disclaimer, we can continue our holographic analogy to state that everything which might "Be" from a beginning that has no beginning to an end that has no end would necessarily "Be", either fixed and eternal or contingent, within the resulting matrix of "informed light" -- otherwise how could it ever be said that God was "All Knowing?"  In this context, every human soul may be likened to a tiny sliver of information which is encoded within the hologram.  This information set (the soul) would be different for each individual to define the enormous range of possibilities that the individual, contingent upon their initial conception, might actualize in the course of their lives.  In other words, your potential (or contingent) existence and everything that your life might accomplish may be seen as encoded within the hologram.  Although this information which contingently became you may be understood to have existed from before the Big Bang, it would only be at the moment of conception that you, and the potentials of your life could, as a function of circumstance and choice, become actualizeable.  Although this means that some of the possibilities for your life (God's actualizable thoughts about your life) would involve more light than others, it is largely through you, through the choices you make, that determines the how and when, if ever, these potentials might become manifest.  It is at this point that I need to digress to describe a vivid dream I experienced more than twenty-five years ago:

 In this visualization, I was aware of myself as in death looking back on my life; which appeared as a time-lapse, stop-motion continuum captured on a life-long strip of holographic film.  All of the choices I had made, and had not made, and the consequence of my actions, and my inactions, seemed both visually and experientially present.  I was aware of individuals with whom I had consciously and unconsciously interacted and the impact of these interactions on our respective lives.  The resulting joy and pain, both mine and theirs, seemed palpable.  I understood in that moment that God need not judge me at death.  I would judge myself.  I further knew that if my life had then ended, I could have spent eternity regretting, as in the biblical parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the unbridgeable gulf between the choices I had made and all which could have been.

Then, I turned.  Before me were the lives I might yet lead; all of my choices simultaneously existing as contingent potentials.  Each choice was marked by new paths which branched and branched again into great chains of alternate realities.  And at each juncture, one of my options appeared different from the others - it shimmered.  With a certainty that surpassed any I had ever known I knew these shimmering paths represented God’s guidance, they were the choices God would have me make - the paths God would have me take.  I also knew that if, in submission to God’s will, I consistently choose these shimmering paths from the multitude God had contingently ordained, I would, as a prodigal son, attain my inheritance, or at least that portion I had not yet squandered.  Then I awoke.

It took some time for me to realize that this visualization was more than a mere dream.  My paper on consciousness reflects some of the research this visualization, among several others, catalyzed. Because the "it from bit" hypothesis claims that "information is fundamental, more fundamental than anything else", I believe there was a reasonable basis to claim that a matrix of information preexisted our Big Bang.  Because "probabilities have a fundamental, irremovable status in quantum theory", I believe there was also a reasonable basis to claim that this information matrix, through most of its hierarchical levels, is also probabilistic (to include the probability that each of your potentials, and mine, might be actualized by our changing circumstance and choices).  Because most of the physicists who advocate for the holographic universe believe "the things that we usually think of as real—particles, fields and even spacetime—have no existence independent of the questions that we ask about them", it should also be reasonable to speculate that the "stuff" of our material existence can be influenced by our thoughts and intentions.  There contentions and my supporting citations are more fully discussed in my consciousness paper.

It is in this context that I believe the frequencies associated all human potentials (those of the "Perfect Man") are subsumed within the light that is first transmitted through the volume hologram we have posited.  Through perhaps an infinity of transmission levels, the intensity and frequencies of the transmitted light would be reduced ending with the "frozen light" of corporeality -- to include the individualized information sets which we have called the human "soul" and those potentials which, when actualized, are the eternal record of the lives we ultimately lead.  Therefore, through what we call our souls, I see the probability density of our contingent futures being defined at conception.  Our potentialities, as defined within the hologram of each soul, can then be actualized through the agency we call "mind" (which I will be describing as analogous to a laser) with light (which theologians would call "spirit"). 

Returning to our analogies, the volume hologram remains as our information matrix but I now propose that the human mind be seen as analogous to a tunable laser -- a laser which, as a function of its intensity and frequencies, extracts information from and manipulates the probability density of information in the information matrix.  As a laser draws images from the hologram, your thoughts, and especially your conscious choices, may be understood to cause the probabilities of what happens next in your life to be altered and the potentials resident in your (holographic) soul to become fixed in the "frozen light" of matter. 

It is in this context that "truth", "ethics", and "morality" can be both absolute (in terms of the eternal and unchanging frequencies associated with God's Attributes) and also be relative.  For example, certain frequencies associated with God's Attributes may have ascendancy in you while other frequencies may have ascendancy in me.  This would mean that the emanating frequencies from your mind and those from my mind could potentially extract different "truths" from the same information matrix.  Also, because you are physically in one location and I am in another, our spatial displacement would cause our mental "lasers" to differentially intersect the hologram.  Therefore, our "truths" could be different even if the frequency mix of our mental lasers were exactly the same.  This means that every human's individual "path of shimmering light" would be time and circumstance specific, but would not be undirected.  Unfortunately, while our frames of reference remain limited, our individual "truths" could appear to be in irreconcilable conflict and although we might both be "right" within these reference frames, we would both be wrong if we stubbornly argued for our divergent positions.  Nonetheless, some "truths" will be more energetic than others.  Hope for agreement and unity, however, exists as we begin to see each of our "individual truths" as particulars which may potentially be subsumed within a more "truth-filled" universal. 

The process by which these universals may be sought, however, requires the participants are to let go of their egos (and hubris) and allow their ideas, as balloons, to rise or fall in accordance with the truth they may contain and, more importantly, to be open to the light, and new frequencies, others may emanate in our discussions.  There are Bahá'í Writings which provide guidance on how we should collectively seek "truth" through a process called "Consultation" http://bahai-library.com/pdf/compilations/consultation.pdf  In any event, the process of consultation (as translated into the holographic imagery I have been using), makes it more likely that a group of individuals collective emanate new and more energetic frequencies causing new "truths" to be intuitively extracted from the matrix of "informed light" as well as from the "frozen light" accessible by our senses.  (A model for how these intuitive "truths" should be tested can be found at https://www.facebook.com/notes/jon-trevathan/a-parable-of-the-tree/10150725699644263.)  At the minimum, consultation tends to expand the scope of a group's considerations (potentially to include all of humanity and the entirety of our earth) and the truth content of the group's collective ideas tend to be greater than the individual ideas that were initially shared.  Also, because many Socrates members feel they are changed by our discussions, I would like to think that each participant's "shimmering paths" are becoming more spiritual, and more inclusive, and will lead to the discovery of those most precious gems that remain hidden within the hologram of our souls.