We are internally related to everything. Not externally related. Consciousness is an internal
relationship to the whole. We take in the whole, and we act toward the whole, and whatever we
have taken in determines basically what we are. Quantum physicist and philosopher David Bohm was
profoundly affected by his close contact with both Einstein and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Bohm's theory
of wholeness and the implicit order states that there is something like life and mind unfolded in
everything. Well, I think the difficulty is this fragmentation, first of all, everybody's thought
is broken up into bits: This nation, this country, this industry, this profession and so on. And it's
extremely hard to break into that. Now that comes about primarily, because thought has developed
traditionally in a way such that it claims not to be affecting anything but just telling you the way
things are. Therefore, people cannot see that they are creating a problem and then apparently trying
to solve it. Let's take the problem of pollution, or the ecology. The ecology is not in itself a
problem, it works perfectly well by itself. It's due to us! It's a problem, because we are thinking
in a certain way by breaking everything up and each person's doing his own thing. Now therefore
the ecological problem is due to our thought. But thought means, it is a problem out there,
and I must solve it. Now that doesn't make sense, because simultaneously thought is doing
all the activities, which make the problem and then there's another set of activities,
to try to overcome it. You see, it doesn't stop doing the things, which are making the ecological
problem or the national problem or whatever the problem is. The earth is one household, really.
We're not treating it that way, right? So that's the first step in economics to say: The earth is
one household and all that it depends on it's all one. So now, the implicit order would help us to
see that. To see: Everything unfolds everything. Everybody not merely depends on everybody,
but actually everybody IS everybody in a deeper sense. We are the earth, because all our substance
comes from the earth and goes back. It's wrong to say it's an "environment", you see, it's just
"surrounding" us. Because that would be like the brain regarding the stomach as part of its
"environment". The root of the word "compassion" is said to be "feel together" and if people have
the same feeling together, are responsible for each other, then you have "compassion". And you
don't think, it's part of the "original sin", that human beings in their very nature compete? Well,
I don't think, that there is such a thing as "original sin". And I think,
it has developed more and more with the growth of our society. That there's no evidence, that people
in the hunter-gatherer society were all that competitive. But the more you made society big,
and you had organization, you had to get to the top. The people on the bottom would suffer. There
was a drive to compete naturally. And do you think, that perhaps, the desire to compete is
a weakness? Not a weakness. It's a mistake! So the first thing, we have to do in the long run,
is to look at our whole way of thinking, which has developed over so many thousands of years. I don't
think it was the original way of thinking of the human race at all, but for many complex reasons,
that came about. That means, that people have to participate, to make a cooperative effort
to have a dialogue, a real dialogue, in which we will not merely exchange opinions, but actually
listen deeply to the views of other people, without resistance. And we cannot do this, if
we hold to our own opinion and resist the other. It doesn't mean, we should accept the other,
but we have to be able to look at all the opinions as suspended, as it were in front of us, without
carrying them out, without suppressing them. Yes, but this wholeness, this new consciousness,
this wholeness, is that something that you can only glimpse? Perhaps as you might have a glimpse
of heaven? Or is it something scientific? I mean: Can you think your way through it? Not really. The
wholeness is an attitude or an approach, but it can be given a scientific realization, you
see. Because of relativity and quantum theory, we can - if we wish - look at the world as a whole.
I began more or less accepting the ideas of Niels Bohr. I wrote a book called "quantum theory" based
on that. I was feeling, that the question really was: What is the nature of reality? Bohr's views
are based on an epistemology of saying that, all we can discuss is our knowledge of reality. And I
felt dissatisfied with that, finally. Well because it did not give any clear concept of reality,
you see. It was only discussed what could be observed and measured. Now, if you said:
"Okay, that's all it is!" and I would say, we will accept it on that basis. But then we would
raise the question: "What can we say?". Well, reality would mean something, that would have some
existence independently of being known. You're safe to say, it might be that we would know it,
but it did not require that we know it, in order to exist! Now, it was difficult to see how this
could be sustained finally in Bohr's view. Now, I tried to get some idea, what might be the process,
which was implied by the mathematics of the quantum theory. And this process is what I
call "enfoldment". That the mathematics itself suggests a movement in which everything in which
any particular element of space had may have a field, which unfolds into the whole and the whole
enfolds into it. So you have this movement and I call this the "implicit" or "enfolded order"
which unfolds into the "explicit order", where everything is separate. Now, in the implicit order
everything is internally related to everything, everything contains everything. So everybody
has many experiences of this implicit order. The most obvious one is ordinary consciousness. Where
consciousness enfolds everything that you know or see. And now it doesn't really enfolds the
universe. But you act according to that content. So therefore, you are internally related to the
whole in this sense. You act according to your consciousness of the whole! So you're not acting
mechanistically in the sense of being pushed and pulled by objects in the surroundings,
but rather according to your consciousness. So if you're not conscious, you cannot act intelligently
toward them. So consciousness is really our most immediate experience of this implicit order.
And you might think of nets of consciousness that are finer and finer. Or we may think of capturing
finer and finer aspects of the implicit order. I think there's an intelligence that's implicit
there. A kind of intelligence unfolds. The source of intelligence is not necessarily in the brain,
the ULTIMATE source. But much more enfolded into the whole. Now, the question, "Why won't
you call it God?" depends on what you mean by the word. Because taking it as a personal God
might restrict it in a way. I think science has begun to replace religion as the major source of
the world view and therefore if science takes a fragmentary world view, it will have a profound
effect on consciousness. But science has always seen as measurement. Is that no longer true? Well,
science is whatever people make of it. science has changed over the ages, and it's different
now from a few hundred years ago, and it could be different again. Now, there's no intrinsic reason
why science must necessarily be measurement. This is another historical development, which
has come about over the past few centuries. It's entirely contingent and not absolutely necessary.
And when Einstein produced his special theory, which "The Times" newspaper of London dismissed as
being "nonsense", was he moving towards wholeness? Yes, he definitely was! He moved eventually toward
a new field theory, where everything was one field and all fields merging. So it was a step
toward wholeness, although it was a limited step, but still it was the beginning. And if we get to
wholeness, are we then in heaven? Where else is there to go? It's not a place you can get to. The
wholeness is a kind of attitude or an approach to the whole of life. If we can have a coherent
approach to reality, then reality will respond coherently to us. But nature has been tremendously
affected by our way of thinking on the earth. The nature is now being destroyed. There's very
little left on the earth which wasn't affected by how we were thinking. And if we have coherence,
in what way will our behaviour be seemed to be different? Well, we will produce the results we
intend, rather than the results we don't intend! That's the first big change. And then we will be
more orderly, harmonious, we will be happier, I think we can put all that in there. But the first
major source of unhappiness is, that we are incoherent and therefore producing results,
that we don't really want. And then trying to overcome them while we keep on producing them.
The question is: "What is the real origin of consciousness?" Stanislav Menshikov: "Exactly,
where did it come from? Was there a time, when there was no consciousness?" Well,
I don't think it originates in time. I think, it's a potential of the whole universe. Wholeness will
arise between us all and participation rather than separately. But if you went as a hermit
into a cave? Well, you still have nature! That's true. We are internally related to everything. Not
externally related. Consciousness is an internal relationship to the whole. We take in the whole,
and we act toward the whole, and whatever we have taken in, determines basically what we are. I read
somewhere that the hunter-gatherer get all their food in about 15 hours a week. Now, we have not
yet approached anything like that. So, but leaving that aside, I think, we need to set aside some
time for this, we need a period of emptiness and quiet(ness), where we can go into this. It doesn't
mean, that we should do nothing else! I think that you have to be sensitive to the question
of delusion. If there is incoherence, you have to be sensitive to incoherence. Now, delusion arises,
when we are not sensitive to incoherence, when we overlook it. There's no guarantee,
that we can succeed in anything. If anybody claims to have evidence, it's always limited, and you
can't trust it either. So in this game, there's no guarantee at all. As we can't trust anybody to
tell us about these things. They have a tremendous resistance, to acknowledging incoherence. People
are constantly saying: "Everything is all right. There's nothing to worry about, this is all very
coherent." Totalitarian regimes are constantly doing that, saying, everything is wonderful. So
that's the key point: First to attend incoherence in technology, and then to start doing something
about it. Stanislav Menshikov: "It has to go in waves, I must say, it has to go in waves! There's
a time for anarchy and there's a time for order. Order creates anarchy, and anarchy creates order."
I think that incoherence has become more dangerous because of the scale of our society and because of
technology. We have all sorts of dangers, such as nuclear war, biological war or chemical war,
destruction of nature, and probably we can think of four or five others, which are brought about by
our power. The greater power we have, the more we need coherence! The question to my mind is:
Is the human being capable of dealing with this situation, which he himself has produced?