Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the

world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible

for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society

as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth

without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our

body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with

various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction,

without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his

writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the

world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

In fact, Bohm believes that consciousness is a more subtle form of

matter, and the basis for any relationship between the two lies not in our own

level of reality, but deep in the implicate order. Consciousness is present in

various degrees of enfoldment and unfoldment in all matter, which is perhaps

why plasmas possess some of the traits of living things. As Bohm puts it,

“The ability of form to be active is the most characteristic feature of mind,

and we have something that is mindlike already with the electron.”

Similarly, he believes that dividing the universe up into living and

nonliving things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are

inseparably interwoven, and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of

the universe. Even a rock is in some way alive, says Bohm, for life and

intelligence are present not only in all of matter, but in “energy,” “space,”

“time,” “the fabric of the entire universe,” and everything else we abstract out

of the holomovement and mistakenly view as separate things.

The idea that consciousness and life (and indeed all things) are ensembles

enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as

every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of

the universe enfolds the whole. This means that if we knew how to access it

we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. We

could also find Cleopatra meeting Caesar for the first time, for in principle

the whole past and implications for the whole future are also enfolded in each

small region of space and time. Every cell in our body enfolds the entire

cosmos. So does every leaf, every raindrop, and every dust mote, which gives

new meaning to William Blake's famous poem:

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.

This infinite sea of energy is not all that is enfolded in the implicate order.

Because the implicate order is the foundation that has given birth to

everything in our universe, at the very least it also contains every subatomic

particle that has been or will be; every configuration of matter, energy, life,

and consciousness that is possible, from quasars to the brain of Shakespeare,

from the double helix, to the forces that control the sizes and shapes of

galaxies. And even this is not all it may contain. Bohm concedes that there is

no reason to believe the implicate order is the end of things. There may be

other undreamed of orders beyond it, infinite stages of further development.

(like other dimensions? wb.)

Considered together, Bohm and Pribram's theories provide a profound new

way of looking at the world: Our brains mathematically construct objective

reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from

another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and

time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe.

(p.64: holographic universe, michael talbot)

A Whole New Human