Wholeness and the Implicate Order Quotes

“Aside from what I feel to be the intrinsic interest of questions that are so fundamental and deep, I would, in this connection, call attention to the general problem of fragmentation of human consciousness, which is discussed in chapter 1. It is proposed there that the widespread and pervasive distinctions between people (race, nation, family, profession, etc., etc.), which are now preventing mankind from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival, have one of the key factors of their origin in a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected, and ‘broken up’ into yet smaller constituent parts. Each part is considered to be essentially independent and self-existent. When man thinks of himself in this way, he will inevitably tend to defend the needs of his own ‘Ego’ against those of the others; or, if he identifies with a group of people of the same kind, he will defend this group in a similar way. He cannot seriously think of mankind as the basic reality, whose claims come first. Even if he does try to consider the needs of mankind he tends to regard humanity as separate from nature, and so on. What I am proposing here is that man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“the illusion that the self and the world are broken into fragments originates in the kind of thought that goes beyond its proper measure and confuses its own product with the same independent reality. To end this illusion requires insight, not only into the world as a whole, but also into how the instrument of thought is working. Such insight implies an original and creative act of perception into all aspects of life, mental and physical, both through the senses and through the mind, and this is perhaps the true meaning of meditation.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“...what we have to do with regard to the great wisdom from the whole of the past, both in the East and in the West, is to assimilate it and go on to new and original perception relevant to our present condition of life.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“older theories become more and more unclear when one tries to use them to obtain insight into new domains.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“The holomovement which is 'life implicit' is the ground both of 'life explicit' and of 'inanimate matter', and this ground is what is primary, self-existent and universal. Thus we do not fragment life and inanimate matter, nor do we try to reduce the former completely to nothing but an outcome of the latter.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“Intelligence and material process have thus a single origin, which is ultimately the unknown totality of universal flux. In a certain sense, this implies that what have been commonly called mind and matter are abstractions from the universal flux, and that both are to be regarded as different and relatively autonomous orders within the one whole movement...It is thought responding to intelligent perception which is capable of bringing about an overall harmony of fitting between mind and matter.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“One might then suggest that in intelligent perception, the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universal and unknown flux that cannot be reduced to anything that could be defined in terms of knowable structures.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“So, we see that the ground of intelligence must be in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the ground of all definable forms of matter. Intelligence is thus not deducible or explainable on the basis of any branch of knowledge (e.g. physics or biology). Its origin is deeper and more inward than any knowable order that could describe it. (Indeed, it has to comprehend the very order of definable forms of matter through which we would hope to comprehend intelligence.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“We can refer to this one process as experience-knowledge (the hyphen indicating that these are two inseparable aspects of one whole movement).”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“Pribram has given evidence backing up his suggestion that memories are generally recorded all over the brain in such a way that information concerning a given object or quality is not stored in a particular cell or localized part of the brain but rather that all the information is enfolded over the whole.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“If one computes the amount of energy that would be in one cubic centimeter of space, with this shortest possible wavelength, it turns out to be very far beyond the total energy of all the matter known in the universe.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“I regard the essence of the notion of process as given by the statement: Not only is everything changing, but all is flux. That is to say, what is the process of becoming itself, while all objects, events, entities, conditions, structures, etc., are forms that can be abstracted from this process.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“The actual operation of intelligence is thus beyond the possibility of being determined or conditioned by factors that can be included in any knowable law. So, we see that the ground of intelligence must be in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the ground of all definable forms of matter. Intelligence is thus not deducible or explainable on the basis of any branch of knowledge (e.g., physics or biology). Its origin is deeper and more inward than any knowable order that could describe it. (Indeed, it has to comprehend the very order of definable forms of matter through which we would hope to comprehend intelligence.)”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“...thought with totality as its content has to be considered as an art form, like poetry, whose function is primarily to give rise to a new perception, and to action that is implicit in this perception, rather than to communicate reflective knowledge of "how everything is." This implies that there can no more be an ultimate form of such thought than there could be an ultimate poem (that would make all further poems unnecessary).”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“As has been seen, fragmentation originates in essence in the fixing of the insights forming our overall self-world view, which follows on our generally mechanical, routinized, and habitual modes of thought about these matters. Because the primary reality goes beyond anything that can be contained in such fixed forms of measure, these insights must eventually cease to be adequate, and will thus give rise to various forms of unclarity or confusion. However, when the whole field of measure is open to original and creative insight, without any fixed limits or barriers, then our overall world views will cease to be rigid, and the whole field of measure will come into harmony, as fragmentation within it comes to an end. But original and creative insight within the whole field of measure is the action of the immeasurable. For when such insight occurs, the source cannot be within ideas already contained in the field of measure but rather has to be in the immeasurable, which contains the essential formative cause of all that happens in the field of measure. The measurable and the immeasurable are then in harmony and indeed one sees that they are both ways of considering the one and undivided whole.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“...it would be a contradiction in terms to think of formulating techniques for making fundamental new discoveries in science or original and creative works of art, for the very essence of such action is a certain freedom from dependence on others, who would be needed as guides. How can this freedom be transmitted in an activity in which conforming to someone else's knowledge is the main source of energy?
....Actually, there are no direct and positive things that man can do to get in touch with the immeasurable, for this must be immensely beyond anything that man can grasp with his mind or accomplish with his hands or his instruments. What man can do is give his full attention and creative energies to bring clarity and order into the totality of the field of measure.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“In a way, techniques of meditation can be looked on as measures which are taken by man to try to reach the immeasurable, i.e., a state of mind in which he ceases to sense a separation between himself and the whole of reality. But clearly, there is a contradiction in such a notion, for the immeasurable is, if anything, just that which cannot be brought within the limits determined by man's knowledge and reason.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“man’s first realization that he was not identical with nature was also a crucial step, because it made possible a kind of autonomy in his thinking, which allowed him to go beyond the immediately given limits of nature, first in his imagination and ultimately in his practical work.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“between the ‘left brain’ and the ‘right brain’.) This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society. As”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“We propose instead that the basic element be a moment which, like the moment of consciousness, cannot be precisely related to measurements of space and time, but rather covers a somewhat vaguely defined region which is extended in space and has duration in time.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“This then contributes to the formation of an experience in which these static and fragmented features are often so intense that the more transitory and subtle features of the unbroken flow (e.g., the ‘transformations’ of musical notes) generally tend to pale into such seeming insignificance that one is, at best, only dimly conscious of them. Thus, an illusion may arise in which the manifest static and fragmented content of consciousness is experienced as the very basis of reality and from this illusion one may apparently obtain a proof of the correctness of that mode of thought in which this content is taken to be fundamental.19”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“On the contrary, when one works in terms of the implicate order, one begins with the undivided wholeness of the universe, and the task of science is to derive the parts through abstraction from the whole, explaining them as approximately separable, stable and recurrent, but externally related elements making up relatively autonomous sub-totalities, which are to be described in terms of an explicate order.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“Si concibe la totalidad compuesta por fragmentos independientes, así es como su mente tenderá a funcionar, pero si puede incluirlo en un todo de una manera coherente y armoniosa en una totalidad general que sea indivisa, ininterrumpida y sin fronteras, su mente tenderá a moverse de una manera semejante, y de ahí fluirá una acción ordenada dentro del todo.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“... in relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well-defined. Each theory is committed to its own notions of essentially static and fragmentary modes of existence (relativity to that of separate events connectible by signals, and quantum mechanics to a well-defined quantum state). One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails is unbroken wholeness.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“movement”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“The undivided wholeness of modes of observation, instrumentation and theoretical understanding indicated above implies the need to consider a new order of fact, i.e., the fact about the way in which modes of theoretical understanding and of observation and instrumentation are related to each other.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“By using the term 'thinking substance' in such sharp contrast to 'extended substance' [Descartes] was clearly implying that the various distinct forms appearing in thought do not have their existence in such an order of extension and separation (i.e., some kind of space), but rather in a different order, in which extension and separations have no fundamental significance.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“Thus, as we have seen, the easily accessible explicit content of consciousness is included within a much greater implicit (or implicate) background. This in turn evidently has to be contained in a yet greater background which may include not only neuro-physiological processes at levels of which we are not generally conscious but also a yet greater background of unknown (and indeed ultimately unknowable) depths of inwardness that may be analogous to the 'sea' of energy that fills the sensibly perceived 'empty' space.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“Division is thus seen to be a convenient means of giving a more articulated and detailed description to this whole, rather than a fragmentation of "what is".”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“However, as indicated earlier, truth and falsity have actually, like relevance and irrelevance, to be seen from moment to moment, in an act of perception in a very high order.”
― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order