Big Dreaming
"Shall we flip a coin?" Doc asked."How about I just go first?" I said, "I want to save the best for last.""Maybe we could just take turns?""That sounds good, perfect really," I said. "Ok, you start.""Ok," Doc readied himself, and me, by pouring each of us a drink. "Have you ever noticed that the word big isn't really all that big, I mean---unlike many words like (if I may be so crude) puke and snot, which closely reflect the objects they represent---the word big just doesn't sound all that...enormous.""Yes, I see what you mean...and yet words can be such powerful things, drive people to do all sorts of things.""And yet they are just models, representations and approximations of whatever it is we happen to be talking about.""And that seems a good place to start any conversation: Either implicitly or directly saying to the audience, realize that every word coming out of my mouth or onto the page, and consequently every sentence that follows, and every paragraph and every chapter, every section and every book is, ultimately, only an approximation of what people are trying to say.""Yes, it's like saying to the audience, especially the quick critic or immediate reactor, by the very nature of what I'm attempting here---its challenge and even impossibility---you'll have to cut me some communication slack.""Yes, cutting "communication slack" is like the listener saying to the communicator, rather than getting hung-up on your words, I will to try to understand the essence of what you're saying, grasp the underlying meaning of your words, capture the spirit behind your expression.""Hence the qualifying opener of the Tao Te Ching, The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.""Yes, even in the many different translations of the original Tao Te Ching from Chinese to English we see a demonstration of the essence of its opening statement, the fine line one walks in attempting to express the Ultimate.""Have you heard the one about the two Taoists who disagreed about the Ultimate?""One thought it was spelled Tao and the other Dao.""Well then, have you heard the one about the two brothers who each had quite different notions about the Divine, yet both were true?""One thought it was God and the other Dog.""In discussions, and especially disagreements, it helps to keep the limitations of language in perspective, not to mention a keen awareness of tendencies to dominate conversation and push personal agendas.""Yes, that's the essence of Bohmian dialog: free-flowing conversation, fully open listening, setting aside defending, suspending judgment and merely expressing perspectives with no particular objective other than the dialog itself. With Bohmian dialog you simply allow conversation-communication to flow without the typical ego-agenda barriers." "I'll have to read David Bohm's book again as part of my study Doc.""Mmmm...Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Perhaps that should be required reading for any number of disciplines, from science to literature to politics, at least the introduction and first chapter.""Students and practitioners of healthcare could benefit from it too. It is after all the original modern day articulation of holism and holistic science and medicine.""Speaking of which, I understand Dr. Bohm had some mental issues himself to deal with, especially later in life, problems with depression. I heard he even underwent shock therapy?""I can't help but wonder, perhaps cannabis would have helped him.""Makes more sense to try that first anyway, better the gentle jolt of that plant than a hundred volts piercing the nervous system at once. I understand shock therapy has about a 50 percent chance of relapse, and for some cases it gives little success, not to mention the risks. A lot to seriously consider there.""Ya know Doc, later in life, David Bohm befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti. Apparently Bohm was drawn to Krishnamurti because his psycho-spiritual-philosopical views so closely resonated with his own emerging scientific views, especially those concerning holism.""There's a lot to learn there. From the life of Dr. Bohm alone one may reach out to any number of critical topics, from basic physics and quantum science to deep mysteries in hidden variable theories and Bell's inequality...from the Manhattan Project and McCarthyism, dirty politics to clean dialog...Bohm's ideas on holographic science and his various collaborations that followed, Karl Pribram to Krishnamurti, the holonomic brain model to physics and spirituality. It's endless really, the places one could go, exploring topics concerning the deepest questions of life and existence, just by starting with one man's life. How exciting is that!""Very! Which is exactly why I want to learn history, and do it in a fashion such as that. It's a method which I think reflects the holistic nature and process itself, a holistic pedagogy to reflect a holistic cosmology. You start from a single critical point---a bifurcation point Chaos theory might call it---and from that point, the world is at your fingertips!""Ah, I see," said Doc. "And, aside from a great mind and life like Bohm's, what would be your starting point?""By all accounts, from the ancient wisdom of the East to the best of the West, I would start with Purusha, pure Mind developing right alongside pure Matter, Prakriti. Cosmic Man and Cosmic Woman joined as one from the very beginning. And from then on, giving birth to the rest of the Cosmos in a holographic manner, such that the One is in the Many as the Many is in the One.That's the cosmogeny or mythos I begin with."
"The beginning of your cosmology is Mind?""Yes, the most brilliant minds of the modern age have concluded that consciousness---if our understanding of quantum science is to make any sense---must somehow pervade the fundamental fabric of the Universe. The great quantum physicist Eugene Wigner near the end of his life was, like Bohm, also drawn to East Indian philosophy because of its ideas of the universe as an all pervading consciousness.""How is this different from the traditional mind-body problem?""This view does not see a mind-body problem to begin with, for mind and body are as two sides of the same coin, they are always one and inseparable, and for all intents and purposes, you cannot have one without the other. In other words, mind does not evolve from matter, rather they co-evolve together. Consciousness does not suddenly spring from the brain at a certain point in creative evolution. Rather mind and matter have been developing side-by-side all along throughout time and space.""And beyond time and space?""Now we enter dimensions lower and higher where three-dimensional constructs, including words, begin to break down and fail us. Here we enter the realm of Mystery, the domain of the mystic, a subject for the poet to express. I'd rather stick with history and science now.""Very well. So where do you go after the beginning, after the Big Bang, or the Big Communion of Purusha and Prakriti. What happens with the start of Mind-Matter Co-Evolution?""Yes, that is the topic I want to get at, the study of how everything we now see came to be. It includes cosmology and astronomy---the history of our universe and the creation of its elements, atoms to stars and galaxies, planets and moons and nebulas, dust clouds, black holes and all other things of a celestial, otherworldly and nonearthly nature. But the topic also includes geology and chemistry---how the earth came to be, the interaction and development of all its components, minerals and rocks to crustal plates, living land forms, the processes of tectonics and volcanism and hydrology, building the foundation for life as we know it. So too the topic is about biology and anthropology---origins in macromolecules and cells, the development of multicellular structures and tissues, organs, organ systems and organisms, splits into different creatures, vertebrate and invertebrate, fish to amphibian to reptile and mammals to primates and humans, groups and tribes of hunter-gatherers, then farmers and villages to societies and civilizations, east and west, ancient and modern...and on and on and on."
"That's a lot!" exclaimed Doc."And that's just the thinnest surface of it! The possibilities for exploration, from the infinitely large to the infinitesimally small, are endless.""And the tools of the explorer?""The mind and the senses, the body and brains, feeling and emotion, all the tools of bodily perception, with extended nonorganic instrumentation as well, along with all the various disciplines and subspecialties of science and investigation, widening and deepening our understanding.""Sounds challenging, maybe even a bit overwhelming!""Just dip-in your toes or dive-in head first, swim around or get carried away, head above water or gasping for air, either way the water's great!""Good swimming pools to start with?""The history of science from Galileo on to Newton and the Theory of Evolution, then 20th Century science from Einstein's relativity to quantum theory, then Bohm's holistic science with an understanding of Nature's underlying dynamics as presented by Chaos science.""And after that, or alongside perhaps?""Basic world history, including religion and philosophy, a fundamental grasp of ideas and the way the mind works, psychology and anthropology, how people think and interact, evolutionary history and animal behavior, how we got here and why we might act the way we do, ecology and sociology, understanding interdependence, interconnectedness and dynamics...Hey Doc, would you mind pouring me another glass of wine?""Sure thing.""How 'bout you Doc, what do you want to do next?""As with you, student-teaching." "So it's on to holoergonomics then.""Right. But first, there's the movie at the Paradise tonight.""2001: A Space Odyssey!""Kubrick and Clarke, genius times two, yet another example of creative synergy at work, just like the Wright brothers.""Makes the impossible possible!""Right!"Ding.Ding.
