Holoprocess: Bohm and Whitehead in Dialogue

"The world is moving so fast these days that the [one] who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it." Elbert Hubbard
  1. Holoprocess: Introduction
  2. Holographic Universe: Bohm Opens
    1. David Bohm (Physicist) & Karl Pribram (Neurophysiologist)
    2. Listener: What Is A Hologram? S. Physics Today, p. 93
      • "... a photographic record of the patterns produced when laser light reflected from an object interferes with a reference beam derived from the same source."
      • interference of waves
      • Making a hologram:
        1. two semi-silvered mirrors split a laser beam
        2. which is reflected to illuminate the object.
        3. light from reference beam is directed onto a photographic plate
        4. where it interferes with the laser light reflected by the object.
      • resulting interference pattern is a bunch of concentric circles
      • Viewing a hologram:
        1. light with laser light
        2. observer sees a 3-d virtual image
        3. a real image is also produced, which can be recorded on a photographic plate
    3. implicate order (enfolded)
      • every bit of film contains whole image, but progressively hazier
      • any piece of the holographic film reproduces object
      • therefore, an object exists throughout the film
      • the whole in every part 
        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
        		Auguries of Innocence;
        William Blake
      • Therefore, information is non-localized
      • The Brain as a Hologram (chapter 1):
        • memories not localized, but apparently distributed
        • when a hologram is cut up, the info becomes hazier.
          so to every part of the brain contains all of the brains memories, but hazier if lobotomized.
        • the wave interference in the brain is caused by the rippling of electricity through neurons
      • by changing the angle at which the two laser lights (the split beam) hits the film, many different images can be recorded on the same surface
        • retrieved by a laser at the same angle as recorded
        • vast memory
      • memory is associative
      • The Cosmos as Hologram (chapter 2)
        • the paradox of subatomic particles:
          • wave and particle; either wave or particle
          • two widely separated particles take on identical characteristics when they are measured violated Einsteinian time barrier
        • Bohm: quantum potential field: subquantum level
        • whole does not equal sum of parts, rather behavior of parts determined by the whole: part of an indivisible whole
        • non-locality: at subquantum level of quantum potential, location ceases to exist.
          all points equal all other points; s. pp41-42
        • all things are not separate but part of an unbroken web and embedded in a subquantum space
      • everything enfolds everything
      • all of s-t, p-p-f, everywhere is enfolded in the implicate order
    4. explicate (unfolded) order
      • a laser light shining on holographic film reproduces object in 3-d
      • the reality of our senses
      • process of holomovement: everything in the cosmos is not separate but merely unfoldings from the cosmic fabric or implicate order
      • an electron is an enfolded ensemble (p. 47)
      • everything is interconnected and interwoven, so that some things are not living things and others non-living things, but everything in same manner is living.
    5. Reality = implicate order + explicate order
      = seamless wholeness of our objective and subjective worlds
    6. holomovement
      • constant flux of unfolding and enfolding, p46ff
    7. non-locality and synchronocity
      • non-locality: every piece contains the whole; the whole contains every piece distributively
      • synchronocity: acausal, non-local event-relationship
      • seamless holographic fabric
      • continuum is not just space-time, but everything
      • the implicate order it timeless and spaceless, so the barriers and restrictions of space and time are not operative.
    8. implicate order => eternity: pp197ff
      • flow of time: constant series of unfoldings and enfoldings
      • past in present as implicate order
      • future as implicate in present? p205ff
      • see Neville's Flow of Time
    9. This model explains:
      1. Psychology (chapt 3)
        • ESP dreams
        • dreams that advice us
        • lucid dreams
        • transpersonal experiences
        • conversion experiences
          • sudden and transformative changes in a person
          • hologram of experience is tapped and unfolded
          • as adults we form "vortices" in the river of unfolding/unfolding that keep us from partaking of the entire implicate order
          • be like a child
        • synchronocity:
          • better call Liz and Liz had had surgery
      2. spontaneous healing (chpt 4)
        • Larry Dorsey: illness is not an external force, but part of the unbroken wholeness of lives
        • we are interconnected with all of nature
        • tapping the implicate order allows us to exercise holistic healing
      3. psychokinesis (chp 5, p119ff)
        • response to "meaning" is both biological and mental:
          matter acts on information according to Bohm
          see Process enjoyment
        • psychokinesis: resonance of consciousness with matter
          consciousness and matter are two sides of the same thing in the implicate order
        • reprogram implicate order: changing the laws of physics (programs in the implicate order)
        • implicate order (holo film) => mind (laser) => reality (holo image)
        • infinite number of potential realities enfolded in the implicate order
        • p. 139: are we creating particles at the sub atomic level? Q. M. implies that consciousness has significant effect on results.
        • Is reality a holodeck open to our changing it? Is the universe a product of our psyches and consciousness? illusion or Maya
      4. Time shifting (chp 7; p197ff)
        • retro cognition: shift focus of attention and gaze into the past
        • Time:
          • implicate order is atemporal
          • flow of time = unfolding/enfolding
          • all "frames" (chronons) of the past stored in the implicate order (a la Rucker)
          • every time and place is accessible from every time and place
        • "Bohm's assertion that every human consciousness has its source in the implicate implies that we all possess the ability to access the future ..." p.209
          • implications for free will
          • can we change the future or is it fixed? Talbott says changeable
        • "The shadowy stuff of the soul" (p. 213): incarnation the soul progresses through various lives
          • experiments showed an "in-between lives" time to sketch out important events of future lives
          • a meta conscious state of transparent honesty and morality
          • do we self-make and self-judge (p.218)?
        • Higher self + shadowy body stuff (bodily Resurrection)
          • thoughts are builders of our destiny
          • if you have faith nothing is impossible to you Mt 7:7;17:26
          • Course In Miracles
        • Is time illusionary (p.229)? Is the explicate order illusionary? recall Plato & Maya Or is our perception of linear time illusionary?
        • OBEs: consciousness detached from body. in a holographic universe/model everything is non-local: not located in any one place, but located everywhere. Hence consciousness is not just located in the body.
  3. The Listener Questions:
    1. How does the implicate order related to paradise? what is beyond it?
    2. What is Death?
      • cessation of unfolding and merging back into the implicate order (reincarnation)?
      • removal from the implicate order?
    3. What is being alive?
    4. Where is the divine?
    5. What about free will? if we are the unfoldment of the implicate order, what does that say of our free will? of sin? of evil?
    6. What of prayer?
    7. What is heaven?
  4. Whitehead Rebuts: What's Missing
    1. The Divine Utterly Other
      • The implicate order is created
      • All of Talbott's reports of Bohm and his disciples explain the spiritual as a function of the created implicate order
      • Where then is the utterly other? or do you deny this?
    2. Kenosis
      • To empty of idols
      • Unfolding and enfolding does not have an element of emptiness
      • Relies on judgment that implicate order is Platonic
    3. suffering, sin, evil
      • No structure to define / understand suffering
      • Without a clear understanding of God, cannot build such a structure
  5. Process: Whitehead
    1. Process Philosophers: Alfred North Whitehead & Charles Hartshorne
    2. Process
      • not everything is process; e.g., principles of process and abstract forms
      • to be actual is to be process
        • creation is in process, growing, becoming, decaying
        • if the actual or fully real is beyond change, then creation is devalued
        • therefore, if to be real is to be in process, then to be in creation is divine
      • time -- one kind of process
        • temporal process is a "transition" from one actual entity to another
        • entities are instantaneous/infinitesimal: Perishing immediately upon coming into being
        • time is not smooth, but succeeding events, like a motion picture (hence, the possible notion of chronons:
          • my notion
          • wave and particle
          • quantum of time)
        • "actual occasion" or "occasions of experience"
        • enduring "individuals" are actually societies of these true individuals
        • time is a vector
      • Concrescence -- second kind of process
        • becoming - perishing
        • the eternal now
        • actual individual is atomic
    3. Enjoyment (p. 16)
      • upon concrescence an actuality "enjoys" "subjective immediacy"
      • "enjoyment" is not necessarily pleasure or conscious
        • to be, to actualized, to act on others is to enjoy being an experiencing subject
        • every actuality "enjoys" its existence
        • all actualities "enjoy"
        • to experience is to enjoy
        • consciousness is not required to experience: therefore rocks enjoy
        • consciousness illumes only a selective set of factors of experience
      • All actualities have an inner and outer reality and are akin to all other actualities
    4. Essential Relatedness
      • actualities are occasions of experience and do not endure
      • the soul -- stream of experience -- is composed of distinct occasions of experience (p 19)
      • relations are primary
        • an actuality becomes individual out of the multiplicity of relations
        • present occasions is process of unifying its prehension
        • "prehension" and "feeling":
          • the present occasion "prehends" or "feels" the previous occasions
          • present occasion receives as inputs:
            1. previous occasions (efficient causation)
            2. self-creation (free will)
            3. God's lure (initial aim)
            4. God as potentialities or novelty
      • essential interdependent -- ontological
        • that an actuality is independent ontologically derives from our belief that God is independent and from our striving to be really real: our rebellion
    5. Incarnation (p.22)
      • to prehend a past experience is to include it
      • an occasion incarnates partially the past occasion it prehends as having been experienced
      • memory, e.g.
      • part of past's objectiveness and subjective reaction to it
      • past lure is incarnated in the present: objectively immortal
      • we influence each other by entering into each other (ecological view), not as billiard balls bouncing off each other
      • the cause is incarnated in the effect
    6. Creative Self-Determination -- self creation
      • what about autonomy or independence? final causation
      • process is partially self-creation
      • each present actuality determines how it will "immortalize" the past
      • free will and determination in equal parts
        • freedom constrained by the world
      • our enjoyment is a function of our environment and our free will
        • the boundary between individual and environment is fluid -- perishing and becoming
        • optimal environment is not a guarantee of high quality -- given free will
      • God relates to us to optimize our enjoyment, but does not guarantee it
    7. Creative Self-Expression
      • the aim of an actuality is to enhance its enjoyment
      • half of creative aim: our self-creation -- private enjoyment
      • half of creative aim: pervade its environment -- self-expression -- sharing
      • therefore
        1. absolute egoism is ruled out
        2. concern for the future can be enhanced: function of morality
        3. anticipates its self-expression will be well received
    8. Novelty
      • God: primordial envisagement of pure possibility
      • an actuality can actualize an unactuated or new possibility
      • divine reality: ground of novelty and changing and developing order
    9. God-Relatedness
      • God: attractive possibility, lure, "initial aim", urging to new height of joy
      • God: ground of novelty
      • p. 29: God lures or persuades -- does not control
      • p. 27: "And, far from sanctioning the status quo, recognition of essential relatedness to this God implies a continual creative transformation of that which is received from the past in the light of the divinely received call forward, to actualize novel possibilities ..." [CHECK THIS]
  6. Bohm Rebuts: What's Missing
    1. Embodiment in the sensual world
      • Process is very abstract; mathematical
      • Where are the ordinary experiential handles?
    2. Implicate Order
      • Plato's Forms
        • world of pure and perfect forms
        • circle, spiral
        • e
        • ø
      • Ground of Being
        • Jung's collective unconscious, s. p60; Talbott
        • archetypes are in the implicate order
      • Heaven
        • Whitehead interrupts:
          • mythological or ...
          • Kingdom of God on earth
  7. Holoprocess: Details
    1. Common themes
      Theme Process Holograph
      Co-Creation God's lure Reprogram the implicate order
      Embodiment incarnates past partially in present unfoldment
      Flow of Consciousness perishing - becoming unfolding - enfolding: Holomovement
      Objects Society Ensemble: Holomovement
      Ecological Will joy of everything/individual; self-creation everything responds to information/meaning
      Ecological Relationship paninterelatedness synchronocity
      Soul stream of experience continuing consciousness
      time every concresence contains totality of past in it and future potential "past is active in present is a kind of implicate order" (p. 200)
      becoming - perishing is flow of time unfolding - enfolding is flow of time
      time is real and a vector time is non-local, a fourth dimension
      chronons succeeding events frames stored in implicate order: a la Rucker
    2. Different Themes
      Process Holograph
      • theomaton
      • novelty
      • the divine
      • sin
      • resurrection
      • non-locality implicate order
      • Conversion
      • Heaven
    3. Union: HoloProcess = reality
      • Concresence: what happens in the infinitesimal instance of becoming/unfolding after/before perishing/enfolding
        • free will is exercised
        • being in the implicate order
        • differs from Whitehead who viewed this infinitesimal as the sole time of aloneness
        • in this kenotic instant, instead, we return to the ground of being
        • instant of kenosis
        • encounter with God (utterly other) by Plato's forms:
          1. A union ø = A for all A
            ø added to anything is anything (essential part of anything)
          2. A intersection ø = ø for all A
            Everything has nothing (ø) in common with nothing (ø) -- it is utterly other
          3. A intersection B = ø => A, B disjoint
            A, B utterly different have in common the utterly other.
          4. We have within us the utterly other and have it in common with the utterly different; yet we remain ourselves
          5. Though ø is in every set, no set has anything in common with ø
      • at becoming/perishing: incarnate past occasions, God's lure, novelty, etc.
        • Ontological interconnection and interrelatedness
        • the media for these is the implicate order
        • the utterly other relays its aim and novelty via the implicate order
        • co-creation: we create with God who interpenetrates us with divine lure and potentiality
      • therefore, everything is in relationship and affects everything
        • Whole in every part and many potential wholes
          • non-locality
          • synchronocity
        • Ecological will
      • Everything is in process or evolutionary change
        • Life, death is a continuum flowing from the conception and evolution of creation
        • web of all life and things
  8. So What? Today's Moral Issues

References

  1. Cobb
  2. Hartshorne
  3. Talbott, Michael; The Holographic Universe; HarperPerennial; ©1991.
  4. Neville
  5. Plato; The Republic; translated by Benjamin Jowett; International Collectors Library
  6. Blake, William; The Poetry And Prose of William Blake; Edited by David V. Erdman; Doubleday & Company, Inc.
  7. Physics Today; The World Book Encyclopedia of Science
  8. Rucker, Rudy; The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston; ©1984.
  9. Jung, C. G.; Psychology & Religion; Yale University Press, New Haven and London; ©1938.
©1999 Rev. John A. Mills, Pastor, First Congregational Church, Closter, NJ fcclostr@cwn.com