Ruach as Holomovement: David Bohm, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Thay Hanh, Bucky Fuller, and others

[sophiaserpentia]

This post is meant as a starting point towards demonstrating the parallels between the philosophy outlined by Neil Douglas-Klotz, and the concept of the holomovement as developed by David Bohm.

From Douglas-Klotz's thoughts about God:

In Aramaic, the name Alaha refers to the divine, and wherever you read the word "God" in a quote from Yeshua, you can insert this word. It means variously: sacred unity, oneness, the All, the Ultimate Power/Potential, the One with no opposite. It is related to the name of God in Hebrew, Elohim, which is based on the same root word: EL or AL. This root could be translated literally as the sacred "The," since it is also used as the definite article in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic.

If we think deeply into this, we find it suggests that every definite "article" -- every unique being -- should remind us of the one Unity. If only one Being exists, then every other being must have a share in it. Individuality is only relative in this view of God. (The Hidden Gospel, p. 27)

Compare this to David Bohm's depiction of the cosmos as an undivided wholeness, and every "object" discerable as such as a hologram which, if we examine closely enough, would reveal information about everything in the cosmos. (Compare, also, Thich Nhat Hanh's description of "interbeing" as the state of existence of all things together and each thing individually.)

To generalize so as to emphasize undivided wholeness, we shall say that what 'carries' an implicate order is the holomovement, which is an unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases, we can abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g. light, electrons, sound, etc.) but more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and are inseparable. Thus, in all totality, the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable way at all. It is not required to conform to any particular order, or to be bounded by any particular measure. Thus, the holomovement is undefineable and immeasurable. (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, p. 191)

The sense of all as movement depicted in Bohm's understanding of the cosmos reminds me very strongly of the image given by Douglas-Klotz of ruach:

God is breath.
All that breathes resides in the Only Being.
From my breath
to the air we share
to the wind that blows around the planet;
Sacred Unity inspires all. (renditions of John 4:24 "God is a spirit" based on the Aramaic; The Hidden Gospel, p. 41)

In both Hebrew and Aramaic, the same word -- ruha in Aramaic, ruach in Hebrew -- must stand for several English words: spirit, wind, air, and breath. Translations that arise out of European Christianity assume that only one of these possibilities is appropriate for each passage. However... when we meditate on the words of a prophet or mystic in the Middle Eastern way, we must consider all possibilities simultaneously. So "Holy Spirit" must also be "Holy Breath." (p. 41-42)

From the perspective of Sacred Unity, my breath is connected to the air we all breathe. It participates in the wind and in the atmosphere that surrounds the whole planet. This atmosphere then connects to the ineffable spirit-breath that pervades the seen and unseen worlds. (p. 43)

Postscript. I think too that the vision of Universe as described by Bucky Fuller can be reconciled with this. Fuller was interested in the geometry of stable forms, and so on the face of it his conceptualization might seem to be exactly opposite of Bohm's. However, Fuller included in his understanding of system and conceptuality the existence of "things" as unique unfoldings from potential. His views come close to dualistic Platonism, but I think he keeps from going over the "edge" and describes a monistic tension. In this context, then, chew on this:

Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special-case, local, time-space transformative, evolutionary events. Humans are each a special-case unfoldment-integrity of the multi-alternatived complex aggregate of abstract, weightless, omni-interaccomodative, maximally synergetic, non-sensorial, eternal, timeless principles of Universe. Humanity being a macro-to-micro Universe-enfolding eventuation is physically irreversible yet eternally integrated with Universe. Humanity cannot shrink and return into the womb and revert to as-yet unfertilized ova. Humanity can only evolve toward cosmic totality, which in turn can only be evolvingly regenerated through new-born humanity. (Synergetics, 311.03)

Comments

[hyparxis.livejournal.com]

I am more interested in Bohm's explanation of the Bell/Aspect experiment, and his idea that quantum entanglement with its attendant 'sppoky action at a distance' is not actually dependent on the observer's frame of reference...

any ideas on that?

read any Nick Herbert?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I did read Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert, a long time ago, but don't recall any special points he may have made.

Bohm answers the EPR paradox with a nod to Niels Bohr, who concluded that particles which are connected at any point in space-time remain an unbroken whole even when they appear to us to be separate entities. From there he explains that the reason things seem separate to us is that we see only the explicate or "unfolded" parts of reality. In his interpretation, the explicate order is only a very small part of all that exists, the rest of which is folded up in the implicate order. If we could see the entirety, Bohm suggests, we would see that all of existence is an unbroken wholeness which has the appearance of being broken because of the way it is folded up.

[hyparxis.livejournal.com]

the doesn't address the issue of why the observation of spooky action at a distance (the phase angle of the two Bell/Aspect photons influencing each other in zero time, over infinite distance) ceases if the frame of reference of the observer changes.

nick herbert goes into this, with his Eight Possible Quantum Realities... but Bohm has ruled out this observer role, in some abstractions and philosophical derring do I find a tad speculative and 'thin'....

i have an ecopy of 3 of Nick Herbert's books, if you want them... and some other relevant texts...

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I confess I don't know how to answer your question. On the face of it, nothing I've read in Bohm would necessarily contradict the observer role you're talking about. He seemed to feel that consciousness and perception played an important role in the process of explication, and as far as I can tell there's no reason why that would contradict the cessation of "spooky action at a distance" if the observer's frame of reference changes.

OTOH it's entirely possible that Bohm did rule that out in something of his I haven't seen.

Yes, perhaps you could send me a link to the relevant document where Herbert discusses this. IIRC he's favorable to the Everett interpretation, no? (Maybe I'm thinking of Chalmers.)

[hyparxis.livejournal.com]

the Herbert Material is in 'Quantum Reality'.

I found the Bohm material in a recent anthology of his, I will reference it later today probably....

(How I wish Bohm had discussed Castaneda at some point lol...) I also have the complete Krishnamurti, with many talks with Bohm....eformat

the Bohm Reference

[hyparxis.livejournal.com]

ch. 2, "Science, Order and Creativity"

Routledge, 1987, 2000


The Bell/Aspect phenomenon does vanish if the observation is broken...