Development for the first fifteen years of life is a series of shifts into greater personal power and possibility. We begin in a sensory-motor mode, crawling about, interacting with one object at a time and identifying with those objects. Once this weak and most restricted mode is stabilized, nature shifts us into our dreaming brain, and new power manifests. We overlay our sensory-motor images with internal ones and play in the modulated imagery that results. Around age four we shift into the new brain as our locus and develop an analogical language of symbols and metaphors that can transfer sensory-motor imagery into abstract imagery, and vice versa. At the same time, we develop intuition, perceptions outside direct sensory-motor stimuli, outside locality in time and space. We bond into a single unit our three different means of perception: concrete image, dream image, and abstract image. The resulting state is more powerful than the preceding ones.
Around age seven, we begin to be able to take an internal image and, rather than simply superimpose the external image for a play reality, we may actually change the concrete object through superimposition. At that point, the source of the sensory-motor image is itself altered, and along with it our sensory-motor reality. To walk fire or bend metal requires access to an energy greater than that through which the chemical-molecular structures of fire and flesh, or bars of steel, are ordinarily maintained. A weaker energy cannot modulate a more powerful one.
By about age eleven we can stand outside all our modes of perception and play with the modulations possible between these systems. We can then create forms of art, or systems of logic such as mathematics, philosophy, or religion. Our awareness has now extended from our original sensory-motor identity into an abstract mental process that needs no reference outside itself. We can then create internal sensory worlds and enter into them. This is a long way beyond our earliest, crawling state. Our power and possibility have increased at quantum leaps at each stage of development. But where does the power come from?
Consider, first, that the physical world we know is the external form of an inner projection taking place through the primary brains and projected on the screens of our minds. All that we can ever be aware of is that we interact, using our sensory system, with perceptions we know are an internal production, a play between the three brains and mind. We perceive the world, but this is a perception given us, and perception is creation. We cannot claim to create physical reality through our awareness of that reality, nor can we assume that physical events take place outside our awareness of them. The event we know as reality is a dynamic between possibility and realization. The creation cannot be pinned down by intellectual premise nor split into pieces. The dynamic is our reality and our questions should center on the nature and process of this creative dynamic that constitutes our consciousness.
Common sense refers to a shared reaction to sensory stimuli. Common sense demands that we recognize the source of our physical stimuli to be external to us, and it certainly is. But this externalization is also a product of our brain/minds. The brain places stimuli according to logical necessity. Some sensory information is placed as an outside event, some as inner imagination. Under certain circumstances we can mix our mediums and share a common perception that arises from within us. The fakir with his rope trick, groups in mutual dreaming, the teaching experiences given me in meditation—all are cases in point. By and large, though, we share a common physical world, and the history of physical science has revolved around discovering what these commonsense systems are. Even the experiences explored by scientists are expressions of our three-fold brain, however, and the relation between inner and outer image embraces our whole experience.
In our expanding scientific model of the world we can find many parallels between the energy of physics and personal power. Some three centuries ago, Isaac Newton commented, almost marginally, that matter and energy were exchangeable. More recently, Henri Poincaré worked out a mathematical equation for this exchange. Albert Einstein picked up on Poincaré’s work, rewrote the equation as E = MC2, and now receives full credit for the idea.1 Back in 1940 my eighth-grade science teacher wrote ENERGY = MATTER on the blackboard, held up a tiny lump of coal, and announced that according to atomic theory there was enough energy in that tiny lump to run a steam engine such as a freight train for a year. Then he snickered and we snickered since that was the silliest statement we had ever heard.
In 1940 few people understood or believed in the theory of atomic energy. Einstein scoffed at Enrico Fermi’s proposal which eventually gave us the bomb. And Fermi’s process was not, as commonly believed, based on Einstein’s theories. In 1945, we dropped a couple of Fermi’s brainchildren, took out a few hundred thousand Japanese in a matter of seconds, and every schoolchild then knew that energy and matter were, indeed, interchangeable.2
The atomic proposal that the most energy arises from the smallest bit of substance was a logical offense, but quantum physics held even bigger offenses in store. Truly big energy, the evidence from quantum mechanics suggested, comes not from matter at all, but from the empty spaces between the particles of matter. Break up an atom, our littlest item, and we get our biggest bang (to date). But within the spaces of an atom, or in spaces without atoms, quantum physicists said, lie far larger fields of energy. The most comes not from the least, but from nothing at all.
Early in our century, physicists had found what they assumed to be the basic particle out of which atoms, molecules, cells, and bodies are built. In a major logical offense they found that this building block would, under one set of laboratory circumstances, act as a particle should; under another, it acted as a wave of energy. Energy functions as either particle or wave according to the experiment we set up, which defies all classical logic.
Today physicists accept that a wave field of energy underlies all particles of energy. A field is a continuum of energy that has no localization, no place. To be localized or placed, the energy must manifest as a thing, a specific, singular event. The field embraces the range of possibilities for thingness or manifestation which that expression of energy contains within it. In order to manifest as a thing or event, all those variables appropriate to that field are eliminated, and the field is said to “collapse” to the particle event then expressed. The particles present themselves as more restricted than the wave forms, since the open potential has closed to that single configuration.3
The fifty or so phonemes that underlie language can be considered a field of appropriate variables. As the child imprints to the given language model, the variables possible within the field close to that specific configuration. Without the model, the field retains its potential but has no existence. Once expressed as a particular language, the field closes, yet is always there in some manner as the substratum from which its expression springs. (Condon and Sanders find our sensory-motor response to phonemes present on a microkinetic level all our life.) In the same way, quantum physicists say the wave collapses into particle form yet the particle also resonates as its own wave form. The particle-wave possibility displays as one or the other according to the display we set up.
The electron, for instance, does not swing around the nucleus of the atom in an orbit like a planet around the sun; it resonates as an orbiting wave field around a nucleus which is also an expression of a wave form at its own level. Under certain circumstances, that orbiting wave field can be observed to be a particle, but we must set up the conditions for that observation to manifest. We can consider a particle a thing set apart from its wave form and so having existence in a measurable time and space. The particle is the localized expression of the non-local wave field. From the wave standpoint, none of our language or logic applies, since our language and logic are the results of our experience with particularized expressions of energy. The wave form is not any thing and does not exist as a measurable time-space phenomenon. Yet the wave form participates in and precedes all things and brings about those particularizations that give time and space.
All phenomena we know are the results of energy interactions of this kind. The first energy interactions available to us on being born into this world are particle in form—that is, sensory-motor. This physical or concrete state is the most restricted, contracted form of energy, and, since our awareness is brought into being through such stimuli, we have no choice but to identify with this contracted state as our first expression of being.
Once this concrete level of experience is stabilized, around the end of our first year of life, our consciousness is free for further development. We then move into that dreaming mid-brain, with its capacity to translate highly fluid, flexible images. This opens to us a more fluid, flexible reality. The mid-brain translates subtle energy, wave forms that act to give meaningful shape to the constricted, concrete imagery of the old brain. But this shaping force is not available for measurement by instruments or even our ordinary sensory observation, since our observation is a result of the process we try to view and the instruments we use are physical properties. The flexible imagery of the mid-brain has no localization, no placement, but can be superimposed on those contracted images of the old brain for a flexible reality. The mid-brain opens to the field of variables appropriate to the physical phenomena to be modulated. We begin this superimposition of images by the second year of life; it is a movement beyond the restricted particle expression into a greater realm of possibility, a greater freedom of conscious awareness. Through fantasy, storytelling, and play, the child is driven to develop ever more unrestricted modes of consciousness, learning to handle ever more fluid forms of experience.
We know that our eyes register only a small part of a spectrum of light waves. In the same way, we register only a small part of a possible field of energy through our restricted reptilian-mammalian sensory system. As physicists Kafatos and Nadeau point out, a field (as a continuum of appropriate variables) is logically antithetical to the construct of matter as a discrete, localized entity in space and time. Thus, in physics, “. . . when we seek to understand the field aspect of a phenomenon, nothing can be known about its discreteness (as matter) and vice versa.” In the same way, our blueprint for intelligence, as a field of possibility, can only display in discrete, set-apart events, and does so according to the models of discretion given. The blueprint, as an open potential, closes to that model’s expression. If we should remain related only to this closed expression, however, we would be restricted to an extremely contracted state of consciousness, which would create despair. The whole point of the development of intelligence is to move beyond this either-or split displayed in physics, even in quantum physics. Consider matter and energy. Each is needed to understand any event, and yet one displaces the other in a given instance. In the quantum domain, as Kafatos and Nadeau point out, the description of a state splits into two mutually exclusive classes which are complementary to one another, since both are needed to describe completely the state of the system. This principle of complementarity applies equally to human development. The inner state of power and possibility is complementary to the outer, realized models of that possible power. Both are needed for development and both are needed to explain who we really are.
From the standpoint of particle reality, the absence of particles means a vacuum state, a state of nothingness. Classical physics assumed, rightly, that no energy existed in a vacuum. The particle is set apart from the wave state as a discrete thing. A vacuum is devoid of particles and so devoid of the energy inherent in things. On the other hand, since nothing is set apart in a vacuum, it has no restriction within its continuum; there is no contraction of its field of potential. Coming into existence sets it apart. To realize an event is to select from, and so close, the continuum of variables. Existence (ex sistere) means decision, in effect a cutting off of variables. (Decision is from decidere, to cut off.) We restrict the potential to the limited but specific expression of that energy. So any appearance is bought at the price of the open continuum of possible appearances. The field “collapses” to that specific. So, from the standpoint of a quantum potential of energy, an absence of matter automatically means a freeing of the potential inherent within the field. The more perfect the vacuum, the greater the potential.
Furthermore, the more compact the wave itself, the closer together its peaks and troughs, the greater the power inherent within that wave spectrum. Long, slow waves (such as photons) are weaker than fast ones. Max Planck estimated that waves could reduce to a final, irreducible length of 10–34 centimeters (which is less than nothing at all). Take the figure one, follow it with thirty-four zeroes minus centimeters, and you have the estimated size of the final wave forms before the compaction is complete and no movement manifests. At this point of compaction, called Planck’s Constant, a single cubic centimeter of empty space contains an estimated 1093 ergs (energy units). Though only potential energy, from a physical standpoint, this is far more energy than computable from all realized matter within the entire conceivable universe, with all its untold billions of galaxies.
Recall my story of my eighth-grade science teacher in 1940, with his talk of running a steam engine for a year on a tiny lump of coal. The quantum-theory statement that a tiny cube of emptiness contains more potential energy than all matter in the universe is simply a logical extension of the earlier atomic notion. As we reduce down to the heart of matter, the energy increases. To get to the source of that energy, though, we must reduce down through and beyond that heart of matter, into emptiness, or no-thingness—at which point energy is infinite and beyond computation. Physicists hasten to explain that this is only potential energy and not available as such. But, as we shall see, the energy is not available only if we adhere to a logic drawn from physical matter. The fields of energy are not just potential; within their own logic they simply are, they exist. At a point in our development we are designed to shift from this orientation which considers anything not physical as “only potential.” That is, we must shift from the primitive view which can comprehend, or grasp, possibility only when it lends itself to physical application. Our first stage of development places physical realization as the focus of life, and rightly so. Once this physical orientation is stable, however, we are designed to orient to the energy field itself as the focus, and recognize that physical realization is only a temporary platform or training ground from which we can move beyond such restricted forms.
Einstein did not like quantum mechanics and, with two mathematical friends, Rosen and Podolsky, came up with a mathematical disproof of quantum mechanics by showing a basic contradiction, a true paradox, within its terms. In 1964, nearly thirty years later, a mathematician-physicist, John Bell, came up with a theorem showing that Einstein’s paradox proved, rather than disproved, the case for quantum mechanics. Eight years later, John Clauser, then at the University of California, using his own variation, gave the first substantial laboratory proof that Bell’s theorem was true. Since that time a steady succession of experiments has established the validity of Bell’s theorem and quantum mechanics. Many physicists have referred to it as the most significant discovery of Western science.4
A stream of paradox pours from Bell’s theorem and a logical shift for all of science looms large. For instance: If two particles of energy are brought into proximity with each other, as part of a relating system, and are separated from that physical relationship and sent off in opposite directions, traveling away from each other near the speed of light; and the spin or polarity of one particle is changed by an interference; then the spin, or polarity, of the other particle will simultaneously shift in the same manner.
We assumed that nothing could exceed the speed of light and the particles are moving apart at that speed. Yet when one is changed, the other particle mirrors that change with no time lapse. This indicates some kind of communication outside the restrictions of time and space. Further, mathematical extrapolations of the laboratory events show that even though the particles should move an entire universe apart, they will still mirror each other simultaneously, once they are brought into this proximity as part of a closed system.
Recall that if we put two live heart cells on a microscopic slide, well separated, they pulse randomly. Bring them closer together and at a certain point they arc the gap between, communicate, and pulse in synchrony. They establish a bond that arises as the relation between the two cells, a relation which is initially dependent on proximity (though not actual contact), but which then holds outside all physical restrictions. Bonding is not restricted to time and space, yet it participates in both. In the same way, the particles in Bell’s theorem bond by coming into contact on a physical, or localized level, and the bond, once established, holds outside the limits of localization. The bond is established within the wave field from which the particles arise. Time and space of a particle nature do not apply within the wave field. The non-local state is not subject to the restrictions, or laws, of the localized, physical state. But the bond cannot be considered in the wave state, since the bonding relates to particle forms. Without the particles, without physical forms that are set apart from each other, bonding is meaningless. Bonding is the dynamic, or participates in the dynamic, between the two states. Bonding is the dynamic of relationship, the force that relates apparent separations to the underlying state of unity. Bonding is the force that encompasses and participates in both particle and wave field and so enters into the material configurations that result.
The general principle of complementarity in physics shows that we have either one state or the other, physical or subtle. Yet we must have both to explain fully any situation. The full explanation, which leaps the logical paradox of either-or, is the principle of bonding. Bonding arcs over and beyond all complementarities. Through the bond our consciousness moves from the restriction of realized forms into the open and fluid potential of the wave field, not as “material” for use in the restricted physical mode but as the grounds for non-restrictive awareness, the freedom from physical form. Wave and particle are mutually exclusive yet equally available through bonding. The complementary principle expressed in our development is that we are both states and both are available when conditions are met.
Like intuition, the particles of Bell’s theorem communicate outside time and space. Time and space, which create the vast universe about us, prove to be but surface displays of a far vaster underlying continuum. But two questions remain: From where does that initial wave form, of 10–34 centimeters, come? And how is it that the wave “collapses” to the same configuration each time to create a stable universe? For instance, excepting heart and possibly brain cells, my body replaces every cell in it, including those in my bones, about every seven years, and replaces every atom within those cells within a year’s time. Yet my overall physical form remains essentially the same—more or less (that is, more wrinkles, less hair, and so on). So how do the waves underlying my particles collapse into this more or less same localized form, so that I persist as this body (as long as I do)?
First, if each particle resonated out of its own private little wave, which private wave reduced down to its own private little final point of compaction, that source of Planck’s Constant, then Bell’s theorem would not hold and we would have only chaos, a random profusion of non-relating particles. The logic of the quantum movement of energy impels the conclusion that the phenomenon of wave fields manifests from a single source. Planck’s Constant of a wave only 10–34 centimeters marks not the final point, but the first appearance, of creative energy. The point of origin must obviously lie beyond that first manifestation; and that point of origin is the mutual state inherent within all manifestations, and the point from which all bonding springs—the common reference point establishing the relations of all eventual appearances in restricted forms.
Ancient sages had clear models of this creative process, and physicists have recently become intrigued with the striking parallels between these oldest and newest systems. Yogic cosmology represented creation as springing from a single point of consciousness to produce a manifold universe. The yogis said that this single pulsation displayed as four “worlds”: (1) the initial unmoving point from which all action springs; (2) a causal world of pure potential energy; (3) a subtle world that was the immediate precursor to, and mirrored back into, the physical world, as a kind of mental double; and (4) the final physical world. The yogis said that each of the worlds was represented in us as a body. Within the physical body is a subtle body; within that subtle body a causal body; and within the causal a supra-causal body, which is that unmoving state from which everything springs.
Furthermore, the yogis expressed these body-worlds as four states of consciousness: a waking state, associated with the physical body and world; a dream state associated with the subtle body and world; a deep-sleep state associated with the causal body and world. Beyond all these was our silent-witness state, the initial unmoving point from which the other modes were simply observed. They called this fourth state the seat of the Self. The Self is a single, indivisible unit of consciousness that expresses itself through these three modes of action. From the weakest, the physical, to the all-encompassing power of the final non-moving point of awareness, the Self, there is only a single, flowing action of creative energy. This energy is a single impulse of consciousness and so cannot divide, yet a series of contractions creates the illusion of infinite divisions, or separations, and the Self explores the play, or unfolding out, of its singularity. So, in spite of Maya, or the great play of illusion, there is only the one Self, and each of us, of logical necessity, is equally that Self, at the core of our beings.5
Even the most cursory glance at this yogic outline shows clear parallels with both brain structure and the development of intelligence. In Chapter 2 I discussed how the waking state and physical world are translated into our awareness through our primary brains, particularly the reptilian. We must establish this state in our earliest period of life. The dream state and subtle world are translated through our mid-brains and established in early childhood. The “deep sleep” causal world is translated through our new brains and we explore causality from age seven on.
The deeper one goes into a study and practice of yogic thought, the more evident these parallels become. And physicists will miss the implications of the relations between yogic cosmology and physics unless they recognize all the parallels. The physical universe, with its galaxies of stars, bodies, and brains, is the scientist’s continual focus, point of departure, and destination; it is a self-encapsulated trap. The only viable focus or point of view, and the only point from which the human can mature, is that single point of consciousness beyond all universes, and from which they all spring.
David Bohm, theoretical physicist at the University of London, has grasped the totality involved here. Creation, Bohm observes, takes place as a single, indivisible movement of energy he calls the Holomovement.6 This movement is expressed outwardly in endless variations through what Bohm calls the mathematical interweaving of this single energy; rather as you could take a single thread and, without breaking that thread, weave a huge, elaborate tapestry from it.
In this process of weaving we can observe four general categories, or orders of energy, through which the creative process moves. The weakest expression of energy is our physical universe. Bohm calls it the Explicate Order, that which is made explicit or manifested physically. (Obviously this is the order which is translated through the old brain.) This Explicate Order resonates out of a field Bohm calls the Implicate Order. In this Implicate Order, physical form is implied but not yet expressed. The Implicate Order is a subtle energy where the wave assumes its impulse toward actual configuration as a particle energy state, or as Explicate Energy. This Implicate mode has an inevitable intent toward specific expression and is a far more powerful energy than its final expression as matter. The Implicate Order acts as the blueprint whose implications are filled with Explicate Order content. (The mid-brain is the translating medium for this subtle energy.)
Implicate energy resonates from a yet more powerful field of pure potential energy, which in itself manifests as an intent toward creation in general. This potential order of energy is the intent to become implicate energy, so to speak, the intent to display as a functional blueprint of possibility. This potential is a kind of precursor to all form, a causal energy. (This is translated through the new brain; and the eight basic geometric families underlying our visual process, and all configurations of matter, are the imagery of this mode.) This causal energy is not quantifiable in any meaningful way, and is far more powerful than the Implicate Order it underlies (just as the new brain is the most powerful system within the triune brain, and the means for both concrete and formal operational thought).
This potential energy resonates in turn out of—or is the initial expression of—that hypothetical state beyond all energy as movement, that fourth state from which everything springs. We can add all possible energies of the first three orders and never accumulate anything suggestive of the fourth state, Bohm says, for it lies, of necessity, beyond and superior to any of its expressions. This fourth state encompasses all its possible expressions, from its own point of logic, but is not made up of any or all possible forms of its expressions. The fourth state is infinite energy and the genesis of creation itself. (Naturally enough, this state has no equivalent brain organ. The brain, mind, and body are its instruments or means of expression. The fourth state has been expressed as seated in the heart.)
Bohm calls this final state the realm of insight-intelligence. In so doing, he breaks with the mechanistic, dualistic, and behavioristic thought dominant in our time. Recall that Newton first suggested that matter and energy were interchangeable, a notion rethought by Poincaré and refined by Einstein. Bohm goes the next logical and inevitable step and points out that energy also equals consciousness. Bohm says consciousness can “display itself” as either energy or matter. And at that point, Bell’s theorem and several hundred other major paradoxes of contemporary science are immediately resolvable, provided we will make the shift of logic involved; and from that point of shift we can move into the true universe, the one within. For, as Bohm puts it, this physical universe of stars and galaxies is but the merest ripple on the surface of the Holomovement.
To say that consciousness can display itself as energy or matter is not to restate Arthur Eddington’s proposal that the universe is one great thought. Consciousness is not thought. Thought is a constricted, limited form of consciousness. Nor is the physical universe, to which Eddington referred, the same as Bohm’s Holomovement. Bohm is one of the first major scientists (hardly the last) to break from the fixation on and limitation of our thought to a physical mode. Only by looking beyond the physical, as Bohm has, can we grasp our true dimensions.
How, then, is form established and maintained in a flow of conscious energy? Rupert Sheldrake, biologist at Cambridge University, has an interesting answer: through habit.7 Much as we get repetitive patterns of thought going in our heads that become difficult to stop, consciousness as energy follows patterns. The hydrogen atom, for instance, is the simplest combination of particles. The wave collapses to its particle and the particle either splits into two relating polarities, or the particle chances on another particle in its brief instance of appearance and forms a pair-bond, in effect. The relationship sustains the particle. (Any separated entity must relate to another separated entity to be sustained.)
When two particles come into contiguity and relate, they form a system. The relation reflects back into the precursory wave state since relationship is, by its nature, a subtle energy process, a wave phenomenon, not a particle function. So the wave field producing the particle is influenced in turn by the relation the particle establishes. This relation then enters into the flow of the wave field, which replicates the action. We form a kind of tape loop between possibility and actuality through this subtle effect of relationship. (Thus, isolated particles tend to disintegrate, or revert to wave status, since they do not participate in the subtle wave field producing them; they elicit no sustaining wave-collapse pattern.)
So the simplest atom immediately becomes a model for further movenents of energy, an attractor or influence within the wave field. With an established entity as a model attractor, repetition of that pattern becomes increasingly more likely until virtually inevitable. The relational patterns reflecting back into the wave field become increasingly powerful, and the model factor is strengthened at each repetition as well. Profusion results because the model as stimulus feeds back into the wave field, setting up within the overall wave field a sub-set of appropriateness among the field’s variable possibilities, and the appropriate variables tend toward expression. An implicate field is set up. Implications of the direction or tendency of particle expression are manifested within the now-specialized field within the overall wave field.
At the same time, the profusion of relating particles (the atoms) sets up its own particle field from which a further possibility opens: Combinations of the paired relationships form other, more complex relations, other atoms, not just pair-bonds of particles, but multiple bonds. Each new combination achieved acts as a possible model for the flow of consciousness. Each repetition strengthens the model relation, which acts back into the relational field and influences variations in the precursory flow. Each type of new wave-particle relation sets up a corresponding type of precursory response in the wave field. Different wave lengths articulate within the continuum of possible energy and tend to become self-sustaining spheres of influence on the course of events. Each sphere becomes a continuum of appropriate variables—the variables appropriate to the particular configuration intended by that implicate field.8
From the field of varied atoms arise fields of possibility—combinations such as stars, planets, chemicals, molecules, proteins, cells, bodies, brains, what have you. The longer a particular form repeats, the more stable and more likely its repetition. The entire play is consciousness unfolding as a separation out from itself, thereby establishing new relationships and possibilities. The rise of Self consciousness follows inevitably on combinations of increasing complexity, a tracing of which is far beyond our scope here. Suffice it to say that the more complex the conscious organization, the greater the power and possibility available, since there exists a wider number of causal fields to draw on. And the wider the fields available for expression, the more critical the role of the model.
Whether or not this particle, wave, or atomic model is a final “truth” is debatable and beside the point. The model partakes of our own nature and reflects back to us our self in some way, as all our models do. We can view our history from any angle and end with our own self as starting point. No matter our genesis, by the time evolution arrives at the human being we have Self consciousness, a complexity that reflects throughout the spectrum of possibility. As with all formations, this Self consciousness moves immediately toward replication and preservation. Each of us is driven to preserve his or her Self consciousness in the face of inevitable physical death. And the possibility of such sustenance could lie only through alignment with and relation to that source from which we arise. This is no simple procedure, and the role of the model by which such possibility as transcendence opens becomes critical. The narrower the field of possibility, the more casual, less critical, the model factor. The wider the possibility, the more specific that model must be. The characteristics demanded of a model of transcendency are both difficult and explicit.
We have no universe except as it is translated through our three-fold system. Rather than the brain being a micro-hologram of the macro-hologram universe, a full universe lies infinitely beyond the physical one, and is enfolded within us. But to consider that the four- or five-pound blob of gray-and-white matter in our heads might be the source of the power and possibility we can manifest would be naive and ridiculous. Vast amounts of information can be translated through a microchip in one of our new computers, for instance, but to attribute the source of that information to the chip would be equally naive and ridiculous.
In the same way, the brain/mind does not generate, but rather translates power and possibility. The brain/mind is the median, the interface between possibility and its expression. Our outer field is limited and restricted, but contains specific models that give the direction our inner fields can take to shape our experience. The progression of power is within, finally residing in that realm of the heart. Since this energy is a single movement, any expression of a particular order of that energy contains the whole of that order, according to Bohm. And any order of energy must contain the whole movement of creative energy itself. In looking at the physical world, even at our bodies, everything resonates out of that single center of creation. When the physicist refers to the empty space of his super vacuum, he does not mean space as in space travel to the stars. The space is that within us, beyond the world of subatomic particles, beyond existence. This inner realm is no miniaturized version of the physical world. Time, space, and measurement are left behind to enter this fluid state of power. The logic drawn out of our outer world of separated experience will not fit the reversibility of this inner journey.
We must stand on our physical basis, however, in order to move in the opposite direction, away from the physical toward that state beyond existence, that point from which existence springs. With our identity established in that final state, we can then withdraw identity and awareness from our physical system, with all its supporting wave fields. Since that physical expression is in constant dissolution and reformation, it is not a satisfactory point of identity. The dissolution always outstrips the reformation, and our instrument of interaction gets shoveled six feet under all too soon. Identified only with such a weak and temporary system, despair is the only reasonable state of mind. Identified with the creative point from which all life springs, ecstasy, joy, and power are reasonable expectations. The problem lies in that shift of logic from existence to non-existence, or locality to non-locality. But this, too, is a matter of development, a development which is also built in, ready to unfold when given the proper teacher or model, and frame of reference.
David Bohm says all physical matter is enfolded within any part of physical matter, within a grain of sand or cell of our body. All time is enfolded within a single instant of time, all space enfolded within any cubic centimeter of space. The opening lines of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence anticipate and summarize the Holomovement:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your Hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Finally, of equal necessity, Bohm says the entire Holomovement is enfolded within every single human psyche. This too has been said by William Blake and the great sages down through the ages. Beneath the appearances of infinite diversity, each of us is that single unity, the core of the play of consciousness. Tat Tvam Asi. Thou art That. Each of us is the Self. This Self and our individual selves are complementary. On one level of logic they are mutually exclusive: We display as one or the other. Both are needed to fully explain our being, however, and the power of the bond is the arc across the gap of the complementary paradox. The bond is the means by which the individual, discrete self can identify with—and be as—the Self. And as usual, the bonding principle must display for us as a concrete model, out there in our ordinary world, if we are to establish the bond within our own state. And, as usual, the concrete, tangible, flesh-and-blood model can only be one bonded with that Self, one who is the actual arc across that gap of paradox; one who is in union with the Self while still displaying as a discrete, individual being. That is the way the play has functioned from the beginning, in the appearance of the first simple atom on. The formula remains the same.