26 wnt. "Thought as a System" by theoretical physicist David Bohm 2 of 2

50 participants, here’s the dialog part. Such dialogue holds out the possibility of direct insight into the collective movement of thought, rather than its expression in any particular individual.

We are constantly producing situations and things which we don't intend and then we say 'look, we've got a problem'. We don't realize that it is our deeper, hidden conflicting intentions which have produced it, and consequently we keep on perpetuating the problem. So, we must ask 'why do we have this incoherence?' Nobody wants these situations, and yet the things people think they want will inevitably produce the same situations. It is thought that makes people say 'that is necessary'. Therefore, thought has come to this kind of incoherence.

While all these experiments can be undertaken by individuals, Bohm points to a complementary mode of inquiry through the process of group dialogue. He suggests that such meetings have no advance agenda, other than the intention to explore thought. And though a facilitator may be useful in the beginning, the meetings should be free of authority so that people speak directly to one another. In groups of twenty to forty people, the systemic and reflexive nature of thought can come clearly into focus, eliciting a wide range of responses from the participants. Self-images, assumptions and prejudices may all emerge, often with their attendant emotions—defensiveness, anger, fear and many others. The virtue of such an approach, says Bohm, is that the group may be able to detect the flow of meaning passing amongst its members. This meaning may be the content of some particular subject; it may also be the quickened pulses that pass through the group as the result of conflict between two or more members. Such dialogue holds out the possibility of direct insight into the collective movement of thought, rather than its expression in any particular individual. Bohm suggests that the potential for collective intelligence inherent in such groups could lead to a new and creative art form, one which may involve significant numbers of people and beneficially affect the trajectory of our current civilization.

I have long wanted to experiment with the “synergy of dialog”. I have never found many potential participants, much less 20 of them. Also, I think 20 is too many, or I couldn’t organize it. How many people comment on this forum? Of course, I do not know the total membership. On sites that I do know, 450 members produce 2 “Likes” (if you are lucky), and maybe a comment or two. (Of course, I am “long-winded”. Maybe that is a deterrent?)

I don’t think this discussion is a demonstration of Bohm’s idea of a complementary mode of inquiry through the process of group dialogue. It is too focused on Bohm. But please notice; that there are some very intelligent questioners, many of which could be the leader. But his idea has no leader. (9,500 words, sorry for the length. I left two “break points”, so you can read 1/3 at a time). I could leave links to the book, but who would follow them, and dig out these precepts? We’ll see if someone on this forum does some long-reads. This part 2 is a demonstration of a dialog format; and, an informative discovery. If anyone asks for the book in a comment, I will give it in another comment.

************** HERE IT IS:

“Now, that was really a kind of introduction”, (see post 7). Maybe we should talk a little about it for a while.

Questioner: I'm unclear on the point about the difference between thinking and thought. Are you proposing that we slide from thinking into thought without being aware that we are doing it?

Bohm: Yes. It's automatic, because when we've been thinking, that thinking gets recorded in the brain and becomes thought. I'll discuss later how that thought is an active set of movements, a reflex. But suppose you keep telling very young children that people of a certain group are no good, no good, no good. Then later on it becomes thought which just springs up - 'they're no good'. In fact, you hardly notice that you are thinking that there is any thought whatsoever.

Q: Right now, in conversation with this group, while you’re talking there's a process of thinking which is, as you explained, more alive in the present. And then this other stuff is happening, which is thought. We don’t seem to have the ability to distinguish the two.

Bohm: No, we don't seem to distinguish the two. Sometimes we do though, because sometimes we say, 'I thought that before'. But generally, we may miss the distinction. And with feeling it's even harder to see that distinction between the past feeling coming up - I call it the 'felt' - and something which would be an active present feeling.

Q: I wonder how much of the fracturing is taught in the Newtonian and Christian models. Or is this actually the brain’s behavior, its normal natural behavior? I remember in grade schools being taught to fracture, classify and disorganize, to take things apart. And my interior was violently against it because I saw this whole knotted skein as an uneducated person does. So I'm wondering whether the brain naturally wants to fracture and analyze, or is it part of the way we teach ourselves?

Bohm: It is to some extent partly the result of the way we are taught. But I think there is some tendency in thought to build this up constantly.

Q: Do you think it is partly intrinsic in the nature of the brain?

Bohm: Not of the brain, but of the way thought has developed. A certain amount of analysis is necessary for clarity of thought; some distinctions have to be made. But we carry them too far without knowing. We slip over. And once we carry them too far, then we start assuming they are just 'what is', and that becomes part of our habit.

Q: How do we recognize where the edge is, before slipping over too far?

Bohm: That's a very subtle question, and we want to go into that carefully during this whole seminar. To get free of that is much more than just recognizing that difference. Something much deeper is involved. What we have to do first is to get some notion of what sort of trouble we're in now.

We started out saying the trouble is that the world is in chaos, but I think we end up by saying that thought is in chaos. That is each one of us. And that is the cause of the world being in chaos. Then the chaos of the world comes back and adds to the chaos of thought.

Q: Are you saying that thought has a kind of possessive quality which stays, gets stuck, and then becomes habitual? And we don't see this?

Bohm: I think that whenever we repeat something it gradually becomes a habit and we get less and less aware of it. If you brush your teeth every morning, you probably hardly notice how you’re doing it. It just goes by itself. Our thought does the same thing, and so do our feelings. That’s a key point.

Q: Isn't the employment of thought in the psychological sense synonymous with corruption?

Bohm: Why do you say that?

Q: Are there not only two states: corruption and innocence?

Bohm: Are you saying that thought by itself is incapable of innocence?

Q: In the psychological sense it seems so.

Bohm: It may seem so. But the question is whether it is actually so. That’s the question we’re trying to explore. We’ll admit the fact that it seems so; it has that appearance. Now the question is: what is actually the case? We have to explore this, and it will take some digging into. We can’t simply take the way things seem and just work from that, because that would be another kind of mistake that thought makes - taking the surface and calling it the reality.

Q: I think what you said is really interesting. I see that if I have the intention to go somewhere but take the wrong road, it’s no problem. The next time I find out what the right road is, change the information, and take a different road. But I often have the intention to do something personally or collectively and it doesn't work out. Yet I don't know what's wrong. I can't seem to change the information. What I'm especially interested in is how there's a sense of 'me' separate from the information and from the intention, feel as though I'm the subjective being who can change it, and yet I can’t seem to; or the world can't seem to. This sense of 'me', separate from the information - would that be something interesting to explore?

Bohm: That's another subtle question, and we will try to get into it during this whole period.

We have that feeling, as you say. But we shouldn't necessarily accept what seems to be. If we accept 'what seems to be' as 'what is', then we can't inquire any further. I mean, if what seems to be perfectly coherent, then I'd say 'all right, why question it'? But since it is highly incoherent, I would say there is a good reason to question it. That would be common sense in ordinary areas of life. It does seem that all that is happening - we all want to do things and we can't do what we want. Something else seems to happen which stops us.

Some of the people who are running corporations are getting interested in this question because they have the same problem. I know some people who are working in this area, and they find that when their boards get together, they can't seem to agree and they can't get the results they intend. That's one of the reasons they are sinking a bit.

Very often there are problems because people are not following the effect of their thoughts - that when they think something, and something is done, it then spreads out to other companies, and then it comes back a bit later as if it were something else independent. They treat it as an independent problem and they keep on, thereby making it worse because they keep on doing the same thing. So their way of thinking is creating a problem. It takes some time for the problem to get back to them; and by that time, they've lost track of it and they say 'here's a problem'. Then they think the same some more, and produce more of that problem, or else change the problem a bit into another one that’s worse, or whatever. The point is that they are not following the effects of their thought. They are not aware of the fact that thought is active and participating. (D.U. I think he means that the effect of thought about something, changes that situation into something different.)

When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you the way things are and then you choose to do something and you do it. That’s what people generally assume. But actually, the way you think determines the way you’re going to do things. Then you don’t notice a result comes back, or you don’t see it as a result of what you’ve done, but even less do you see it as a result of how you were thinking. Is that clear?

So all these problems that I’ve described - that whole depressing series of them - are the result of the way we've been thinking. But people don’t see that. They say, 'We're just thinking. Out there are the problems. The thinking is telling us about those problems - what they are'.

************ (1. I’ll leave some breaks, so you can stop reading and come back when you have more time.)

Q: Suppose I see a situation in which it seems so very obvious that a whole group of people are acting very incoherently. I think I see very clearly that they're being incoherent, and then I start to act to correct that. But if I'm not noticing that my own thinking may be incoherent also, then my action won’t be coherent.

Bohm: You may be caught in the same thing. And even if not, how will you actually correct it? Unless their thinking changes, their action won't be corrected. Now, nothing you do can change their thinking, except communication to them that they're incoherent - communication which they will accept and understand. Otherwise, you are trying to meet thought with force, which is really a kind of violence. If you say out there are some people behaving incoherently and I will try to make them behave coherently, then you’re using force. But they keep on thinking the same old way. If you’re more powerful than they are, they will do what you want for a while - until you get to be a little weak, and then they'll get back at you.

Q: I would like to explore this: thought comes in from the outside, comes into our awareness, takes over, takes possession - and maybe collectively takes possession and we go to war. But we don't see this because thought is possessive, like magic. It takes over.

Bohm: Yes, it takes over. And why does it take over? There are two levels of this point. One is to describe what happens as far as we can see outwardly. The second is to see the source of it, because unless we see the source it will never change.

Q: How can we explore the source?

Bohm: Well, that's what this weekend is about. But I think it's important to see what the question is. The first thing is to see that there is a question which needs to be explored.

Q: Can thought be aware of itself?

Bohm: That's also a subtle question. On the surface it appears that thought would not be aware of itself, if thought is just memory. - Let’s say, however, that we need some kind of awareness of what thought is doing - that seems clear - but which we don’t have, generally speaking. I’ve used the word 'proprioception' in previous seminars to mean 'self-perception of thought', and we'll come to that as we go along.

It may be that thought can be aware of itself. But it would take us rather longer than we have to get into that, this evening, so for the present I think we should look at the thing in sort of a general way.

It doesn't look entirely impossible that we could approach this question somehow, but it is a very difficult question. I would suggest that one reason why it is difficult is that there is a fault in the process of thought.

What I mean by 'thought' is the whole thing - it's all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it's all one process. Somebody else's thoughts become my thoughts, and vice versa. Therefore, it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thought, your thought, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings. For some purposes that’s all right, but not for the purpose we’re talking about now.

I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something that all of those parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, and that department. They don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also, the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.

Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thoughts, 'felts' and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.

A system is constantly engaged in a process of development, change, evolution and structural changes, and so forth, although there are certain features of the system which become relatively fixed. We call this the structure. You can see that in an organization there’s a certain structure. Then sometimes that structure begins to break up because it doesn't work, and people may have to change it.

We have some structure in thought as well - some relatively fixed features. Thought has been constantly evolving and we can’t say when that structure began. But with the growth of civilization, it has developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before. So we have this system of thought. Now, I say that this system has a fault in it - a systemic fault. It's not a fault here, there or there, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It's everywhere and nowhere. You may say 'I see a problem here, so I will bring my thought to bear on this problem'. But 'my' thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault.

We have this systemic fault; and you can see that this is what has been going on in all these problems of the world - such as the problems that the fragmentation of nations has produced. We say: 'Here is a fault. Something has gone wrong.' But in dealing with it, we use the same kind of fragmentary thought that produced the problem, just a somewhat different version of it; therefore, it's not going to help, and it may make things worse. You may say that you see all these things going on and then ask 'what shall I do'? You try to think about it, but by now your thought is pervaded by this systemic fault. Then what does that call for?

Q: Is it that the whole system has been polluted?

Bohm: That's one way of looking at it, yes. Something has happened in the entire system which makes the thought wrong - the whole process in the system is not straight. There may be bits which are all right, but it doesn't stay that way. It's somewhat like the way they used to talk of an egg which was rotten only in parts. There might be some parts which haven't gone rotten, but the rot will spread.

We can get some relatively clear thought in science. But even there it is not entirely clear because scientists are worried about their prestige and status, and so on. Sometimes they won’t consider ideas that don’t go along with their theories or with their prejudices. Nevertheless, science is aimed at seeing the facts, whether the scientist likes what he sees or not - looking at theories objectively, calmly, and without bias. To some extent, relatively coherent thought has been achieved better in science than in some other areas of life. Some results flowed out of science and technology which are quite impressive - a great power was released.

But now we discover that whenever the time comes to use science, we just forget the scientific method. We just say that the use of what scientists have discovered will be determined by the needs of our country, or by my need to make money, or by my need to defeat that religion or merely by my need to show what a great powerful person I am. So we see that relatively unpolluted thought has been used to develop certain things, and then we always trust to the most polluted thought to decide what to do with them. That’s part of the incoherence.

Q: Are you saying that we are in this pollution and we can’t see our true intentions?

Bohm: We don’t see that our intentions are incoherent - that perhaps they are arising out of the pollution.

Q: I think as individuals we strive to resolve these things in ourselves - what are our intentions as individuals? What causes us to act the way we do? And at the same time, I see that part of the global problems you described are a different kind of problem which individuals haven’t faced. For example, individuals want to survive and want to reproduce.

That’s no longer possible in the sense that it was in the past, because a lot of our problems are due to having too many people. We're supposed to be working on this as Individuals and somehow collectively realizing that we can't do the same basic things individuals used to need to do, realizing that something has to be changed.

Bohm: Yes, that's quite true, but we can't seem to do it. People trying to get together to deal with these things don't seem to be able to get very far. Take the ecological pollution or the change of climate. Very little has been done to deal with those problems. A lot of good words have been produced by various governments, but when it comes to putting a lot of money behind their words, they haven't gone very far. Those very good intentions are counteracted by another set of intentions, or a whole bunch of sets of intentions - such as we can't interfere with this, or we can’t interfere with that or we’ve got to allow this and that and the other. (Billionaires to reap profits.) And then it all adds up to very little.

So it's the same incoherence. The intentions which we profess are blocked by another set that we not only don't profess, but may not know fully that we have them. We may not want to know.

Q: It seems we have to become aware of certain assumptions, which we aren't even aware we have. We need to question what assumptions in the system we are taking for granted and how we operate all the time, because there's something we're not noticing which is limiting our ability to make our intentions happen, both individually and collectively.

Bohm: I think that we’re not really aware of what is happening in this system which I've called ‘thought’. We don't know how it works. We hardly know it is a system; it's not part of our culture even to admit that it is a single system.

Q: Would you explain the system again? You said thought has a systemic flaw, but you’re also including the emotions. What else are you including?

Bohm: The state of the body, the emotions, and also the whole society - the culture, the way we pass information between us, and so on.

Q: When you say ‘the state of the body’, are you also including the organs of the body?

Bohm: Yes, the organs are affected by it.

Q: Are you saying that the whole thing is a closed system?

Bohm: No, I wouldn't say it’s entirely closed. A system isn't necessarily closed. It can be open to various influences of things coming in and out. That’s the whole idea of a system. It’s not necessarily closed, but it has a certain stability of structure. It tends to sustain and maintain its structure, so that when something from the outside comes in, it reacts in such a way as to avoid basic change.

Q: But I'm hoping you're going to say that there is a possibility of opening up the structure, or seeing it.

Bohm: There is, yes. I'm not saying the system is everything there is. I’m saying that the system pervades our whole activity. It's like something pervading our activity; but that doesn't mean that it's all there is. Do you get the distinction? The system has become so pervasive, however, that it may be almost all that we are able to see much of the time.

Q: Can you say what is not part of the system?

Bohm: We could say for one thing, that perhaps there is some kind of perception or intelligence which is deeper, which is able to see this incoherence. The system itself could not see its own incoherence very far, because it would distort it. But I’m suggesting that there is a capacity to see the incoherence.

As we've said, to a certain extent the system is necessary. We need this system of thought for all sorts of purposes. But it has developed a fault. Now there is, I say, an intelligence or a perception which goes beyond memory. There's a lot beyond this system. The system is actually only a very tiny part of reality; but it looms very large. Unless you actually see the thing I’m talking about, what I say will be incorporated into the system as an image. Is it clear what the problem is? This system tends to incorporate everything. Anything repeated several times becomes part of the system. Also, somebody may have an insight and then that may easily become part of the system.

Q: Do you exclude intuition from the system?

Bohm: It depends on what you mean by ‘intuition’. I think the system is able to imitate a kind of intuition. It may give a memory of intuition, which feels a bit like intuition.

Q: But intuition would not be part of the system, would it?

Bohm: Not if it were truly so. I'm saying there is 'perception' or 'insight' or 'intelligence' which may not be part of the system. There are various things you can call it, which we'll try to bring out as we go along. Whatever we call it, let's say for now that I don't think it is part of the system. That way we are keeping our possibilities open, and we may see some evidence that the system is not everything.

Q: Aren’t there times an action takes place as a result of what you might call non-self-serving thought, not trying to impose it on someone - where there's a strong element of compassion and love in that particular thought? Then the fragmentation of thought is not really necessarily a part of that activity.

Bohm: If there were such compassion and love then I would say it's not part of the system, clearly. But, of course, a lot of what is felt to be compassion and love is actually part of the system, because once again such experiences, when repeated, become a habit. Thought can produce experiences without our being aware that they are produced by thought. It is this deceptive feature of thought that we have to watch out for. The worst confusion takes place in the question of what is not part of the system, because if you confuse part of the system as not being part of the system then you're lost. So you have to be very careful about that. It's no use just saying that love will take care of everything. People have said that for ages, but it has never done it.

The Christian religion was based on the idea that God is love. They said that there is one God who is pure love, and Christ, and so on. Nevertheless, the Christians fought not only other religions but they also fought each other violently. They carried out very violent religious wars lasting centuries and did terrible malicious things. Now I'm sure these people didn't intend to get into that; they had another surface intention. But because of the way they were thinking about their religion they couldn't help it. Theological ideas, for example, took over from ideas of love. Or there was a question of the religion being connected with the monarchy or power, or whatever. So violence doesn't stop merely by saying, 'we'll act based on love', because that can become just an idea that gets absorbed into the system. (D.U. - You; please act on the basis of love; while I am out to rob and kill you. Mostly all subterfuge.)

Q: If all I've ever known in my whole life lies within the system, then any notion of there being anything outside of that is only a notion of the system. And I can't have any idea what that would mean.

Bohm: We don’t know what it means, but we have to entertain the idea. I think we have to be careful not to paint ourselves into a corner here - to say that everything is in the system and there is no way out of it.

Q: I'm just saying I might get the notion that I could visualize something which was outside.

Bohm: That would still be inside. That becomes the most dangerous source of confusion, because then you say 'that's outside, it's all right'. In such a way thought produces some 'thing which seems to be outside, and it doesn't notice that it is doing so. That's one of the basic mistakes. Thought produces something and says, 'I didn't produce it. It’s really there.'

Q: Are you saying that using thought to establish boundaries leads to fragmentation; rather we should see the difference between what is the system and what is not the system?

Bohm: If we could see it. But the question is how we are going to see it.

Q: There have been a lot of times when people have had insights into particular systems, or become aware of something and made a major change. There was a time before science became established when people believed in magic, and then came science. There are a lot of cases like that, where people did have a radical change in a limited sphere. I wonder if looking at how they did it in a particular area would be useful or relevant to getting to the root of this whole system.

Bohm: Do you have something in mind?

Q: Well for one thing, how did human beings manage to go from never having science to having science?

Bohm: That's an interesting point. How was it possible for scientific knowledge to develop which was quite contrary to the previous culture? That required what I like to call insight. I can give you several examples. From the time of the ancient Greeks up through the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was at the center of the universe and that there were seven crystal spheres of increasing perfection. The seventh one was the perfect one. The basic idea was an order of increasing perfection, and the idea that each thing is striving to reach its right place. It was a highly organic view of the universe. Accordingly, they said: 'Celestial bodies, being perfect, should move in perfect figures. The only perfect figure is a circle; therefore, those bodies ought to be moving in circles.' Then when they found that the planets did not move in circles, they tried to save the appearances, saying: 'well, it's not actually a circle, but we can make it up out of circles on top of circles', 'circles called epicycles.' That is, when they found that the belief wasn't working too well, they tended to move to save the belief, rather than to question it seriously. Gradually evidence accumulated, especially after the end of the Middle-Ages, that there wasn't a great difference between heavenly and earthly matter. The moon, for instance, had a lot of irregular features on it; it wasn't very perfect. Not only the earth, but also other planets had satellites. And so on. There wasn't a lot of evidence that heavenly matter and earthly matter were all that different. But still the idea persisted that heavenly matter was basically different. 'It's heavenly, it's perfect, it belongs up there. It stays up there where it belongs.' And for a time, everybody was satisfied.

There was enough evidence by the time of Newton, or even before, to question that seriously, and some people may have done so. But there is sort of an unconscious level where it still works, saying: 'Why does the moon stay up in the sky'? It's only natural. It's celestial matter, it stays up where it belongs.' Nobody worries about why it isn't falling. Now, that explanation may have made sense in ancient times, and there was an old habit in the mind not to question it - just to take it for granted. By the time of Newton, however, there was enough evidence to question it. The story is, whether it's true or not I don't know, that Newton was watching an apple fall from a tree, and had an insight. The question may have been in his mind, 'why isn't the moon falling - And he suddenly had the answer:' The moon IS falling. That's the force of universal gravitation. Everything is falling towards everything.' And then he had to explain why the moon doesn't reach the ground, which he was able to do later by some calculation showing that it was also going outward. Because it was far away it was moving away from the earth in a fast orbit that kept it off the ground while it was still falling.

So he must have had an insight at that moment, which broke that old mold of thought. Previously, nobody bothered with the question of why the moon wasn't falling, because it seemed so natural that the celestial matter stayed where it belonged. The key point of the insight was to break the old mold of thought. From there on it was not very difficult to go to the new thought, because you could say that if the moon is falling then there is universal gravitation - everything is falling. And you could then go on from there.

There were other cases of that kind, and together they led to our more modern view. But now this more modern view is just as rigidly fixed as the ancient view was, and it would take something to break that too. People now tend to say that this is the absolute truth, final, no more really basic questions need to be asked that might perhaps throw some doubt on the whole framework underlying modern science - as happened with the older Greek and Medieval frameworks several centuries ago. Of course, Newton's insight only broke the pattern in some limited domain. It didn't break the pattern in this vast area that we've been talking about. In other words, all these insights in science were ultimately assimilated within the general system of thought.

What I'm suggesting is that there is quite general insight that is possible which can break an old mode of thought. We'll come back to this again. We have to really look at it. We have to think about an area first, and then see what we can see. That opens the way to something else.

Q: When you say we have to think about it, isn't that the system doing the thinking?

Bohm: It may be or may not be. I think we shouldn't prejudge the issue. I'm saying it may be possible in a flash for some real thinking suddenly to take place. It must happen occasionally, or else where would we be? We would never have got anywhere at all. If we always used the kind of thought we use in nationalism to deal with practical problems we would have been dead long ago

Q: Would it be correct to say that Newton's insight was seeing that the natural state is nothing is motionless?

Bohm: Yes. But even before the insight into gravitation there was already another insight, which was that the natural state of things is to be in motion, to which Galileo also contributed. I didn't give the full story of it. I focused on the one point of gravitation.

Q: What you were saying is very interesting in that Newton was able to pose a question which he wasn't supposed to ask. And then the pattern of thinking was broken.

***************** (2. I’ll leave some breaks, so you can stop reading and come back when you have more time.)

Bohm: Well, that can happen when people are generally asking wrong questions and then somebody comes along and asks a right question. A wrong question is one which already assumes the very thing that ought to be questioned. It's called 'begging the question'. Before Newton, people in physics were generally asking wrong questions because they were not aware of the importance of the question of why the moon isn't falling. They might have asked: 'Why is the moon going from here to there? Why is this planet going in this particular set of epicycles' - and so on. Those would have been wrong questions because they would have tacitly assumed that planets move in the sphere in which they belong. To do this was, of course, not relevant to the actual situation. So because they didn't question that whole structure, they may have been led to ask a lot of other questions which had no great meaning and thus get into deeper confusion. Our questions contain hidden assumptions; that's the point. Therefore, when you question the question itself, you may be questioning a deeper assumption. But that's done non-verbally. Do you see what I mean? To question the question eventually has to be a non-verbal act, which you can't describe.

Q: And that may break all the patterns?

Bohm: Yes, somehow it breaks the pattern. Now, the suggestion is that this pattern of the system is not something with which we are stuck. It may not be absolutely inevitable; there are signs that it could break.

Q: What do you mean when you say that questioning the question has to be non-verbal?

Bohm: If I say I have a question which may contain assumptions that should be questioned, I could question them verbally. But what would lead me to question my question? Eventually I can put it into words; but I'm saying the first step, the first flash of insight, is non-verbal.

Q: Are perceptions in the absence of thought, and then thought becomes a product of that?

Bohm: Yes, thought is affected by the perceptions. It takes a new turn by those perceptions.

Q: If insight isn't thought then what is it?

Bohm: We really have to go into that carefully. How would we answer that? Thought cannot adequately answer it. But then on the other hand, thought could still say something about it which might help us toward the question. We’re not trying to say thought is always the culprit or always bad. It can also in many cases be right, not only in technology, but in other areas. However, I think that the kind of thought that would come in a thing like this is a sudden feeling of waking up a bit.

Q: On the inside, is there an unlimited pool of insight with which any one of us could be in touch?

Bohm: Again, how would I answer that? I'm trying to say 'look at the question'. I'm saying that this is a matter of learning to question the question. Do you have an assumption that I could tell you 'yes' or 'no'. If I can't tell you, then what are we going to do?

Q: Look at the question.

Bohm: Yes. Don't answer it right away. Newton took a long time before he even got to the question, and he was quite bright.

Q: Can a perception take place that helps us to see how impatient we are; how thought likes to have answers and explanations too fast?

Bohm: We can look at that, too. Why do we want the answer right away?

Q: To get on with another question.

Bohm: Is that right? That means we're not interested in the question. If our real interest is to get on with another question, then we're not going to do this one very well.

Q: But that's what we do.

Q: Maybe it’s like a computer, which wants to have information and conclusions right away. Maybe it's the nature of the machinery of thought.

Bohm: Well, that may be. But then we have to ask 'why do we allow ourselves to be subjugated by this machinery'?

Q: Could it be that getting an answer quickly makes us feel oriented and gives the sensation of security?

Bohm: But you could have said the same about Newton ‘that he may have wanted the answer right away. The question about the moon may have been disturbing. Even in science to raise fundamental questions can be very disturbing. Somebody could feel, 'I'd like to have the answer to this right away, and get out of this unpleasant state of disturbance', and he would never get anywhere.

Q: Generally, it's uncomfortable not to know something.

Bohm: Yes. But then, Newton must have been in some state of not knowing. And I don't say only Newton; other scientists must have been for a period in some state of not knowing, or some state of confusion or incoherence or possibly some other unpleasant feelings. But I think Newton worked on it for quite a while. He must have gone through long periods which needn't have been always pleasant.

Q: Then to some extent we have to sustain the incoherence, not to get rid of it immediately?

Bohm: Yes, it’s a mistake to think that you have got rid of the incoherence before you have in fact done so. Otherwise, the system can create the appearance or the seeming of getting rid of it. The system seems to want to relive the pressure without actually getting to the root of the thing.

That’s again the same problem, the same flaw, in another way - the same fault that we’ve been talking about. It’s pervasive in the system. The system doesn’t stay with the difficult problem that produces unpleasant feelings. It’s conditioned somehow to move as fast as it can toward more pleasant feelings, without actually facing the thing that’s making the unpleasant feeling.

Q: The thing about unpleasant feelings and confusion might be something that we learn. I’ve seen a child attempting to do some sort of puzzle, who tries without any sense of confusion or pain, just with interest? - attempting again and again and again until maybe finally he succeeds. So does learning come out of a willingness to face something that does not have an immediate answer but is just sort of held in abeyance?

Bohm: That may well be, but we have to consider the state of the system which has evolved with our civilizations over thousands and thousands of years: we have a lot of bad experiences one way or another connected with not having the answers, and consequently there is a reaction immediately - we want the answer right away. It's the memory of all the unpleasant experiences of not having the answer. Those 'felts' bob up.

Q: Children are pushed to have the solution.

Bohm: They're rewarded if they have the right solution and they face a certain amount of unpleasantness if they don't have it. The educational system does that, the whole economic system does that, as does the political system. Everything has grown up to do that. By now that is part of this system of thought we've been discussing. Therefore, we have to say 'here we are in the system, and what are we going to do with it'? If we have unpleasantness, we might say; 'We shouldn't have it. It would be good not to have it.' But just saying this doesn't change anything. Rather we need to say; 'What are we going to do with it? What will be our response'?

Q: Can we get sensitivity to that here?

Bohm: We’ll see if we can.

Q: It seems that it's not just an intellectual thing. Even listening to our voices here, there's a tone in the way we talk to each other which implies that what we are saying is literally so, rather than ideas or abstractions. And the child picks that up and it becomes ‘I know. I know.'

Bohm: So can we face it here? Is there any unpleasantness in this group with regard to facing the uncertainty, or the unknown? You’ll perhaps notice that there is a tremendous movement away. The system is set up to move away from awareness of that. Now, by inference - by just thinking about it clearly — see that it makes no sense to keep on doing that and the result must be real disaster. We could say ‘my intention is not to do it’. But you will still find yourself doing it. You have a resistance coming from something else - from the system.

Q: Would part of the fault in the system be that we do not understand what is the role of incoherence in learning and in the system? We either try to get out of it immediately or else we stay in it indefinitely. We don’t seem to find the golden means of the middle way, letting incoherence unfold itself sufficiently for us to understand what’s going on.

Bohm: Sometimes we do. I think we understand perfectly well how that works because everybody does it in areas which are not too important to him.

Q: Then we need sensitivity to see what it means.

Bohm: Yes, but the system is not sensitive. The system interferes with sensitivity. It destroys it

Q: I don't understand why we do not see the incoherence.

Bohm: Do we see it or don't we see it? It's a bit puzzling, isn't it? Sometimes it seems we see it. In an elementary technical sense when somebody sees incoherence and it's not worrying him or frightening him, he may actually learn from it, as was said. People do use incoherence. They begin to look at it if they're not too worried about it. But when people find that it’s something all important to them, then they can't seem to do it.

Q: Is it that we have to reeducate our system - that when we’re in a state of confusion or anxiety of not having an answer, we have to understand that there may be another possibility? It seems as though we have to actually articulate that possibility for the system, before even attempting to experience it.

Bohm: How would you do that?

Q: We have been educated to have an answer. All my life, as soon as the teacher asks a question, if I have the answer. I'm a good kid. And then I hear for the first time that if I do not have the answer, I'm still a good kid. So the system is broadening to include something new, which I never even conceived would be a possibility: it's OK to be confused, it might even be interesting. If I'm anxious it's usually hard for me not to want to find an answer, but hearing that anxiety is OK may in itself reduce the anxiety.

Bohm: That may help in some cases. But when you’re really anxious - say if you have some situation involving real danger to you or your interest - I don't think it would always work. Nowadays people may be anxious about losing their jobs, for example, and they could become very anxious about that. It might help relax the mind a bit to think 'well, being anxious is all right'. But I'm not sure that many could sustain this for a long time if it proved to be necessary.

I would like to make this point; it's not merely that you have heard that this is all right, but you must have SEEN that it's all right. It would be still part of the system if you merely took my word that it is all right; unless, having actually heard it, you also saw that it made sense.

Q: Are you saying we need to have a display?

Bohm: You have to see that it makes sense - that allowing anxiety to be there would be the coherent way to function or operate. If you're anxious you need to say: 'I'm anxious. That's part of the whole situation.' But then you have to notice that the system is conditioned to move away from that. And you have to be aware of that as well.

Therefore, by saying all this we have begun to move. By seeing it - seeing that it makes sense and is coherent - then a certain movement has begun, loosening up the system. It shows that this system is not a monolithic rock wall; it’s in fact NOT very solid at all, although it looks extremely solid.

Q: You're asking whether we can learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented.

Bohm: That's part of it. And another part is looking into impulses and feelings and anxieties which push us away from that. Instead of saying 'It's terrible, I'm anxious; I must quickly find some thought to relieve the anxiety', I now say 'Anxiety is perfectly normal and is to be expected in this situation'.

Q: It's an opportunity to learn.

Bohm: It's an opportunity to learn, yes. And this is a reversal of most of our culture.

Now, don't just accept this. If you see this makes sense and is coherent, that doesn't prove it is right but at least it suggests that it's a good approach.

Q: What you shunned before suddenly becomes valuable, at least as an opportunity.

Bohm: Yes. Krishnamurti used to use words like that, saying that envy and sorrow were a jewel. Then people would ask, 'How can he say such things' They're terrible things.' But the point is that if you look at it differently you can see that this is just what you've got to learn - what is actually going on, and what it means. And the very fact that you have all this going on, which you don't really want, is a sign that there is incoherence.

Q: Do we attract to ourselves whatever we need to learn?

Bohm: Well, rather we acknowledge that things which we think we ought to get rid of are actually the clue to what we need to learn. Our whole culture and our whole instinct have told us that these are things we have to get rid of as quickly as we can. But now I've suggested reasons why maybe they are the source, the clue, for learning. In other words, from there we can begin to learn.

Q: And we never do learn because we don't look at them?

Bohm: That's one reason. There are probably a lot of other reasons. It is part of the system; our whole culture is part of the system, saying that we should get rid of pain or uncertainty as quickly as we can. And in addition, there is some instinctive tendency in that direction anyway - to get rid of whatever is painful.

That makes sense in certain areas, such as with a toothache. You have to deal with the tooth, to stop the pain. But even there it could be wrong. If your only intention was to get rid of the pain, you might just use various drugs to relieve the pain until the tooth decayed. If the pain is an indicator that something is wrong, it should be looked at in that way - something which is not coherent is going on.

It's very hard to get this straight, but the pain is in some way a sign, a result of a certain kind of incoherence. Biological pain may also very often be such a sign. In the tooth there is some bacterial process going on which is attacking the cells, and that is not coherent with the healthy operation of the body. Pain is a warning of that. So pain in general could be looked at that way.

There are people who cannot feel pain, and they really hurt themselves all the time. Their pain nerves are damaged. In fact, leprosy seems to be an instance of that. The pain nerves are damaged by the disease. It’s an attack on the nerves, which prevents one from feeling pain, so that these people destroy their muscles by using too much force. It’s been observed, watched carefully, that the destruction of leprosy comes from people using too much force in everything they do. They cannot tell how much force they are using, and they can be observed using fantastic amounts of force which destroy the whole system.

Thus, you can see that pain has a necessary function. And the instinctive wish to get rid of the pain - which works on the animal level - is not appropriate here with thought. That instinct is not good enough. Something much more deep and subtle is needed.

Q: Pain could also be a thought.

Bohm: Well, thought can be painful. The thought of what an idiotic thing you've done, or what a fool you've made of yourself could be very painful.

Q: Or in other cases pain could be more like a perception, something not so much coming from thought.

Bohm: But even so, that pain is something to be perceived. Even if it comes from a thought, there is a perception needed in order to learn.

Q: The pain doesn’t seem to come from thought though. The pain is something I generate in me in response to the thought.

Bohm: But it's part of the generalized thought, in the sense I'm using the word - of the whole bodily response.

Q: If I didn't understand that, I would try to use my thought to solve the problem of the pain which I am generating through my thinking. Whereas I am, in a sense, causing myself pain in response to the thought - unbeknownst to myself.

Bohm: Yes. You're hurting yourself; that is a simple way to put it.

Q: Once the thought or the image is there, isn't the response often immediate? I mean, it's not that we are doing it to ourselves so much as that the thought itself seems to bring physical pain.

Bohm: That's part of this generalized process. I'm trying to say that thought is never just thought, it's also the bodily state, the feeling, the nerves. Whatever is going on in the intellectual part connects with everything else. It flows out so fast that you can't keep it in one place. A thought of a certain kind will produce either pleasure or pain - or at least a memory of one of those feelings.

Q: Didn't you say that it’s an immediate thing, that it is directly wired into the nervous system?

Bohm: Well, it could take a second or two before you feel the pain. It takes a second or two for the nerve impulses to get down to the solar plexus where you might feel the pain. And you don't realize that what you are feeling in the body has been stimulated by your thought, so you say 'I feel fear in the pit of my stomach', or 'my heart is broken', or something like that.

I'm trying to get across the picture that this is one unbroken process. In a sense I am not doing anything - it's going on by itself. But the tacit assumption of thought is that I am doing everything and thought is just telling me the way things are.

Q: No, the thought is 'the pain that’s being done to me'. You say something, and therefore I am hurt. And I actually feel physically hurt.

Bohm: But this thought is double. The thought is that the thinking is being done by me, and the pain is being done to me by you.

Q: You’re saying that the pain is being done by me?

Bohm: By the same thought that does it all in the first place. Is it so fast because the emotion mediates the process? Emotion is very fast, that's true. The emotional center is hit very quickly. But then there is another center down in the solar plexus that takes longer; it may take two or three seconds.

There is an instrument called a polygraph. An electrode is attached to your finger and measures your skin resistance. When your autonomic nervous system is working, the machine deflects. If somebody says something disturbing to you, the needle deflects about three seconds later. It takes a few seconds for the impulse to get down the spinal column; it's in the pipeline for a few seconds, and then it operates. But since you don't see it going down the pipeline, you say that it worked independently - that it was a gut feeling, very important, or straight from the heart. Now, there may be gut feelings, or feelings straight from the heart, but memory can produce something very similar. That's where the difficulty is.

It is getting late. During the night you may want to go over this and think or feel it. We could start tomorrow by discussing whatever you may learn.

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