David Bohm Quotes

a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individual and in society as a whole.

Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity.

the subtle but crucial role of our general forms of thinking in sustaining fragmentation and in defeating our deepest urges toward wholeness or integrity.

As has been seen, fragmentation originates in essence in the fixing of the insights forming our overall self-world view, which follows on our generally mechanical, routinized, and habitual modes of thought about these matters. Because the primary reality goes beyond anything that can be contained in such fixed forms of measure, these insights must eventually cease to be adequate, and will thus give rise to various forms of unclarity or confusion. However, when the whole field of measure is open to original and creative insight, without any fixed limits or barriers, then our overall world views will cease to be rigid, and the whole field of measure will come into harmony, as fragmentation within it comes to an end. But original and creative insight within the whole field of measure is the action of the immeasurable. For when such insight occurs, the source cannot be within ideas already contained in the field of measure but rather has to be in the immeasurable, which contains the essential formative cause of all that happens in the field of measure. The measurable and the immeasurable are then in harmony and indeed one sees that they are both ways of considering the one and undivided whole.

The quantum theory, as it is now constituted, presents us with a very great challenge, if we are at all interested in such a venture, for in quantum physics there is no consistent notion at all of what the reality may be that underlies the universal constitution and structure of matter. Thus, if we try to use the prevailing world view based on the notions of particles, we discover that the 'particles' (such as electrons) can also manifest as waves, that they move discontinuously, that there are no laws at all that apply in detail to the actual movements of individual particles and that only statistical predictions can be made about large aggregates of such particles. If on the other hand we apply the world view in which the world is regarded as a continuous field, we find that this field must also be discontinuous, as well as particle-like, and that it is as undermined in its actual behaviour as is required in the particle view of relation as a whole.

between the ‘left brain’ and the ‘right brain’.) This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society.

...it would be a contradiction in terms to think of formulating techniques for making fundamental new discoveries in science or original and creative works of art, for the very essence of such action is a certain freedom from dependence on others, who would be needed as guides. How can this freedom be transmitted in an activity in which conforming to someone else's knowledge is the main source of energy?
....Actually, there are no direct and positive things that man can do to get in touch with the immeasurable, for this must be immensely beyond anything that man can grasp with his mind or accomplish with his hands or his instruments. What man can do is give his full attention and creative energies to bring clarity and order into the totality of the field of measure.

...we see a rainbow, but what we have is drops of rain and light – a process. Similarly, what we 'see' is a self; but what we actually have is a whole lot of thoughts going on in consciousness. Against the backdrop of consciousness, we are projecting a self, rather than a rainbow.

Irre-verration, i.e. the persistent holding to a truth beyond its proper limits, has evidently been one of the major sources of illusion and delusion throughout the whole of history and in every phase of life.

Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.

If we accept 'what seems to be' as 'what is', then we can't inquire. I mean, if what seems to be were 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. A fellow named Peter Senge has written a book called The Fifth Discipline. He has analysed some of these questions. I don't say that he's got to the bottom of it, but it's interesting. His analysis shows that 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.

Another problem of fragmentation is that thought divides itself from feeling and from the body. Thought is said to be the mind; we have the notion that it is something abstract or spiritual or immaterial. Then there is the body, which is very physical. And we have emotions, which are perhaps somewhere in between. The idea is that they are all different. That is, we think of them as different. And we experience them as different because we think of them as different.

...what we have to do with regard to the great wisdom from the whole of the past, both in the East and in the West, is to assimilate it and go on to new and original perception relevant to our present condition of life.

If one computes the amount of energy that would be in one cubic centimeter of space, with this shortest possible wavelength, it turns out to be very far beyond the total energy of all the matter known in the universe.

If we think, for example, that thought is coming from me individually, this will affect how thought works. So we have to look at both content and structure. We have the sense that we “know” all sorts of things. But we could say that perhaps it is not “we,” but knowledge itself which knows all sorts of things. The suggestion is that knowledge – which is thought – is moving autonomously: it passes from one person to another. There is a whole pool of knowledge for the whole human race, like different computers that share a pool of knowledge. This pool of thought has been developing for many thousands of years, and it is full of all sorts of content. This knowledge, or thought, knows all of that content, but it doesn’t know what it is doing. This knowledge knows itself wrongly: it knows itself as doing nothing. It therefore says, “I am not responsible for any of these problems. I’m just here for you to use.