A Bohmian take on the current state of thinking

[Soul_of_Shu]

With this talk and Q&A one is reminded of the brilliant mind of David Bohm. Not sure how it jibes with all the talk of 'thinking' that's currently going on in the forum, but I found it offered value, and well worth a listen. It also offers a fascinating mandala—a highway cloverleaf interchange as if seen from an OBE perspective—to meditate upon.

[findingblanks]

I love David Bohm' s work but even more his way of engaging. I hope I can get to this video:

Here is a link that might edge towards how Bohm's work could engage with much of the talk here about 'thinking.'

https://www.markvernon.com/david-bohm-a ... nversation

A quote by Barfield from that link:

“It’s like Heidegger would say, thinking is thought thinking through me…. that our job is not to produce thought but our job is to put our mind into thought so that thought can actualise itself, or thought can be present in our mind. I want a word like open illumination.”

[Lou Gold]

With this talk and Q&A one is reminded of the brilliant mind of David Bohm. Not sure how it jibes with all the talk of 'thinking' that's currently going on in the forum, but I found it offered value, and well worth a listen. It also offers a fascinating mandala—a highway cloverleaf interchange as if seen from an OBE perspective—to meditate upon.

I always liked the intuitive feel of an "implicate order" although I assure you that I had no idea of how Bohm's brilliance revealed it. For me, it just "felt right" and during the early 1970s (heady anti-war protest days) I was invited to participate in a seminar with David at the University of Illinois. Curious, I attended, sat quietly for about half an hour, grew bored and got up to leave. On my way out David's wife approached me in a motherly way to ask if something was wrong? I just said, "for me the action is out on the streets." She nodded, softly smiled and gently patted my hand in a way that I perceived as a blessing, a blessing that I've never forgotten.

[AshvinP]

With this talk and Q&A one is reminded of the brilliant mind of David Bohm. Not sure how it jibes with all the talk of 'thinking' that's currently going on in the forum, but I found it offered value, and well worth a listen. It also offers a fascinating mandala—a highway cloverleaf interchange as if seen from an OBE perspective—to meditate upon.

I always liked the intuitive feel of an "implicate order" although I assure you that I had no idea of how Bohm's brilliance revealed it. For me, it just "felt right" and during the early 1970s (heady anti-war protest days) I was invited to participate in a seminar with David at the University of Illinois. Curious, I attended, sat quietly for about half an hour, grew bored and got up to leave. On my way out David's wife approached me in a motherly way to ask if something was wrong? I just said, "for me the action is out on the streets." She nodded, softly smiled and gently patted my hand in a way that I perceived as a blessing, a blessing that I've never forgotten.

Here's how it jibes with the Thinking talk according to me.







All of these 20th century thought-systems which point to an invisible structure which orders our phenomenal world, such as Jung's 'collective unconscious', 'objective psyche', etc., or Bohm's 'implicate order', or any number of other similar concepts in the integral thinkers of the last 100+ years, are pointing to the upper realm of meaning in Cleric's image above. It is the realm which has been 'fourier-transformed' or 'aliased' into what we now perceive as the phenomenal world of fragmented pictures. If we were to treat the image above as a cross-section fixed in our current time, which we generally shouldn't do, but will help for a limited purpose here, the 20th century conceptual systems themselves are residing in the middle, at the threshold of imaginative cognitions which are precipitating into the intellectual sense-world. We can say we are always in the middle because, if we evolve into the imaginative domain of cognition and that becomes our new sense-world, there are still infinite more 'layers' of imperceptible meaning still above us.

Of course this is all just visual symbol for a non-spatial reality, so we don't need to get too caught up on "above" or "up" or "higher", except to the extent they indicate the underlying meaning of what is being referred to - the meaning which resides in the inverse fourier-transformed domain. We don't need to actually know too much about the details of Jung, Bohm, or anyone else to immediately recognize this dynamic in their conceptual systems, IF we are keeping concrete Thinking activity in our observation as much as possible. After all, isn't this what overarching scientific principles are supposed to do? To provide holistic understanding of what seems like otherwise complex and convoluted sense-phenomena in all of their particular manifestations, so that we can explain their structured patterns of metamorphic behavior. For this to really land, we need to start thinking of conceptual systems as ideal temporal phenomena like anything else we observe in the world.

Now think about how many people would look at the image above, read Cleric's essay, or, worse still, my 2 paragraphs above, and say "this guy is a complete amatuer who somehow thinks he has decoded the thought of the most brilliant minds simply by referring back to 'Thinking' itself". That would be justified if the "Thinking" was serving as an abstract concept to which we are simply reducing all other concepts, but that is not how it is functioning here. Rather it's serving as the concrete bridge beween what we perceive in the world, including ideal temporal phenomena, and the deeper layers of meaning we can potentially discern in that same world. We should try hard to remember this when we start lapsing back towards viewing this philosophy of Thinking as just another abstract thought-system among the plethora of such systems out there (which I also do, but fortunately less and less often the more I inhabit this approach as a living ecosystem of ideas). Remember the enormous practical difference it makes when we confront otherwise convoluted and complex ideal phenomena.

[Lou Gold]

With this talk and Q&A one is reminded of the brilliant mind of David Bohm. Not sure how it jibes with all the talk of 'thinking' that's currently going on in the forum, but I found it offered value, and well worth a listen. It also offers a fascinating mandala—a highway cloverleaf interchange as if seen from an OBE perspective—to meditate upon.

I always liked the intuitive feel of an "implicate order" although I assure you that I had no idea of how Bohm's brilliance revealed it. For me, it just "felt right" and during the early 1970s (heady anti-war protest days) I was invited to participate in a seminar with David at the University of Illinois. Curious, I attended, sat quietly for about half an hour, grew bored and got up to leave. On my way out David's wife approached me in a motherly way to ask if something was wrong? I just said, "for me the action is out on the streets." She nodded, softly smiled and gently patted my hand in a way that I perceived as a blessing, a blessing that I've never forgotten.

Here's how it jibes with the Thinking talk according to me.







All of these 20th century thought-systems which point to an invisible structure which orders our phenomenal world, such as Jung's 'collective unconscious', 'objective psyche', etc., or Bohm's 'implicate order', or any number of other similar concepts in the integral thinkers of the last 100+ years, are pointing to the upper realm of meaning in Cleric's image above. It is the realm which has been 'fourier-transformed' or 'aliased' into what we now perceive as the phenomenal world of fragmented pictures. If we were to treat the image above as a cross-section fixed in our current time, which we generally shouldn't do, but will help for a limited purpose here, the 20th century conceptual systems themselves are residing in the middle, at the threshold of imaginative cognitions which are precipitating into the intellectual sense-world. We can say we are always in the middle because, if we evolve into the imaginative domain of cognition and that becomes our new sense-world, there are still infinite more 'layers' of imperceptible meaning still above us.

Of course this is all just visual symbol for a non-spatial reality, so we don't need to get too caught up on "above" or "up" or "higher", except to the extent they indicate the underlying meaning of what is being referred to - the meaning which resides in the inverse fourier-transformed domain. We don't need to actually know too much about the details of Jung, Bohm, or anyone else to immediately recognize this dynamic in their conceptual systems, IF we are keeping concrete Thinking activity in our observation as much as possible. After all, isn't this what overarching scientific principles are supposed to do? To provide holistic understanding of what seems like otherwise complex and convoluted sense-phenomena in all of their particular manifestations, so that we can explain their structured patterns of metamorphic behavior. For this to really land, we need to start thinking of conceptual systems as ideal temporal phenomena like anything else we observe in the world.

Now think about how many people would look at the image above, read Cleric's essay, or, worse still, my 2 paragraphs above, and say "this guy is a complete amatuer who somehow thinks he has decoded the thought of the most brilliant minds simply by referring back to 'Thinking' itself". That would be justified if the "Thinking" was serving as an abstract concept to which we are simply reducing all other concepts, but that is not how it is functioning here. Rather it's serving as the concrete bridge beween what we perceive in the world, including ideal temporal phenomena, and the deeper layers of meaning we can potentially discern in that same world. We should try hard to remember this when we start lapsing back towards viewing this philosophy of Thinking as just another abstract thought-system among the plethora of such systems out there (which I also do, but fortunately less and less often the more I inhabit this approach as a living ecosystem of ideas). Remember the enormous practical difference it makes when we confront otherwise convoluted and complex ideal phenomena.

I'm glad that it works for you and encourage you to keep practicing not lapsing back into dualist argumentation. May you experience many happy trails.

[Lou Gold]

I rather like the image as a graphic representation of birth trauma and Huxley's notion of a 'reducing valve'.

[AshvinP]

I rather like the image as a graphic representation of birth trauma and Huxley's notion of a 'reducing valve'.

Yes, that's another conceptual manifestation of the holistic ideal principle represented by the image - our Fall (birth trauma) into the sense-world, rendering the upper meaningful aspect mostly imperceptible; the higher meaning is reduced to mere pictures by our abstract cognition. The temptation is to begin equating one of the conceptual manifestations as the 'thing-itself', but I am saying we should resist that temptation and understand all such manifestations as expressing much higher principles we have yet to concretely perceive.

[Lou Gold]

I rather like the image as a graphic representation of birth trauma and Huxley's notion of a 'reducing valve'.

Yes, that's another conceptual manifestation of the holistic ideal principle represented by the image - our Fall (birth trauma) into the sense-world, rendering the upper meaningful aspect mostly imperceptible; the higher meaning is reduced to mere pictures by our abstract cognition. The temptation is to begin equating one of the conceptual manifestations as the 'thing-itself', but I am saying we should resist that temptation and understand all such manifestations as expressing much higher principles we have yet to concretely perceive.

I personally lean toward the spherical merkaba of my icon because of the way it conveys a sense of multidirectionality and aliveness, which are the qualities I like to emphasize.

However, I do appreciate the Uelsmann image of what happens as heavenly bodies fall to earth. Looking at this image I can sense both the Steiner notion of mineralization of thought and Kastrup's choice of alter/whirlpool imagery. I personally like to image how the different paradigms might meet.

[AshvinP]

I personally lean toward the spherical merkaba of my icon because of the way it conveys a sense of multidirectionality and aliveness, which are the qualities I like to emphasize.

However, I do appreciate te Uelsmann image of what happens as heavenly bodies fall to earth. Looking at this image I can sense both the Steiner notion of mineralization and Kastrup's choice of whirlpool imagery. I personally like to image how the different paradigms might meet.

Thanks, Lou.

I agree, it is very helpful to recognize all these conceptual systems as moments of an organic Unity. There are no 'random' or 'arbirtary' concepts which cannot be linked to that which is concretely meaningful. It should be understood that, speaking for myself here (but I am confident Cleric agrees), my critiques of BK have never been that his conceptual framework is "wrong" or "fantasy" or anything similar. Those words simply don't apply to any logically reasoned worldviews. Ironically, it is only when we cut off the continuity of logical reasoning activity from the physical to the spritual - the perceptual to the meaningful - that we have destined some conceptual systems to be "right" and others "wrong", for some to be "provable" and others not. Apart from the domain of the most direct natural sciences which observe phenomena, there is no such thing as "wrong" theories or philosophies, only incomplete ones.

The image you shared immediately reminded me of the "monoliths" in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Are you familiar? It is a fascinating imaginative narrative and I am sure most have watched Kubrick's film. These monoliths are symbols for monumental ideal evolutionary transformations, and these films are themselves the product of such a transformation we are living through. It's also interesting to note that Homer's Odyssey emerged in another such monumental transformation and is considered in esoteric tradition to be a reflection of Initation into the Wisdom of spiritual evolution. I don't know if Clarke or Kubrick were aware of this, but it's something your image brought to mind.

[findingblanks]

Soul, I'm 47% shocked you don't find these non-stop group unrequested seminars to be at least as disparaging as a short snide remark.

That said, I can't thank you enough for sharing that video and I hope to respond to it tomorrow if I get a chance. I absolutely LOVED how Bohm articulated the way that thought generates structures that it does not notice as its own products. So rich. Much thanks. I would love to be in a group where we could experience a more organic set of responses to your sharing than we get when a seminar immediately must be enacted. But them's the breaks.