Yes, I have seen you post the Tesla quote before. It is a good quote, and probably quite true. What and how of existence is one thing, but the why is something we do not seem to put much scientific thought into, and the qualia of experience is something rather illusive as well. As an aside, I tend to think that all phenomenon are at root 'non-physical', it is only consciousness that draws these distinctions based on how it experiences them.

What struck me about the idea of the article, is that the brain itself is a network of neurons, wired together through the dendrites and synaptic junctions. It is believed that the pattern of firing of those networks of neurons somehow creates the holographic world within the brain in which we live. All the senses can deliver is patterns of neurons firing or not firing, the brain makes up an experience of reality based off of those patterns by feeding that input into its own network of neurons.

I did not get a clear picture of this profs theory from the article either. It sounds like he is still fleshing it out. But the idea that our larger shared reality follows this sort of neural network pattern is intriguing, because if so, then perhaps we are seeing a fractal like pattern built into a consciousness based universe. Each human mind is a neural network, but in turn is part of a larger neural network like structure. If we follow this up through the higher dimensions of string theory, then perhaps those higher dimensions consist of the next higher fractal level, a network of networks of networks (or a multiverse, of multiverses, of universes) and so on up the chain. This would make a great deal of sense based on the accounts I have read about the dimensions of string theory.