(Page Updated 2/22/25)
From the preceding, fragmentation relates to superficial, finite games, and the explicate order.
I have borrowed the following quotes from David Bohm’s book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980).
For our research on fragmentation, I have utilized Chapter 7, in which Bohm wraps up his “thinking over the past twenty years” (pg. x), as presented in the book.
Throughout this book the central underlying theme has been the unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders. (pg. 218)
It seems clear from the discussion in the previous chapter that the implicate order is particularly suitable for the understanding of such unbroken wholeness in flowing movement, for in the implicate order the totality of existence is enfolded within each region of space (and time). So, whatever part, element, or aspect we may abstract in thought, this still enfolds the whole and is therefore intrinsically related to the totality from which it has been abstracted. Thus, wholeness permeates all that is being discussed, from the very outset. (pg. 218)
In this chapter we shall give a non-technical presentation of the main features of the implicate order, first as it arises in physics, and then as it may extend to the field of consciousness, to indicate certain general lines along which it is possible to comprehend both cosmos and consciousness as a single unbroken totality of movement. (pg. 219)
We begin by noting that (as pointed out in chapters 1 and 5) current relativistic theories in physics describe the whole of reality in terms of a process whose ultimate element is a point event, i. e., something happening in a relatively small region of space and time. We propose instead that the basic element be a moment which, like the moment of conscious, cannot be precisely related to measurements of space and time, but rather covers a somewhat vaguely defined region which is extended in space and has duration in time. The extent and duration of a moment may vary from something very small to something very large, according to the context under discussion (even a particular century may be a ‘moment’ in the history of mankind). As with consciousness, each moment has a certain explicate order, and in addition it enfolds all the others, though in its own way. So the relationship of each moment in the whole of all others is implied by its total content: the way in which it ‘holds’ all the others enfolded within it. (pg. 263)
[O]ur basic elements are only moments and are thus not
permanent. (pg. 263)
We now recall the laws of the implicate order are such that there is a relativity independent, recurrent, stable sub-totality which constitutes the explicate order, and which of course, is basically the order that we commonly contact in common experience (extended in certain ways by our scientific instruments). This order has room in it for something like memory, in the sense that previous moments generally leave a trace (e.g., in the rocks) it is in principle possible for us to unfold an image of the past moments, similar in certain ways, to what actually happened; and by taking advantage of such traces, we design instruments such as photographic cameras, tape recorders, and computer memories, which are able to register actual moments in such a way that much more of the content of what is happening can be made directly and immediately accessible to us than is generally possible from natural traces alone. (pg. 263-264)
It follows, then, that the explicate and the manifest order of consciousness is not ultimately distinct from that of matter in general. Fundamentally these are essentially different aspects of the one overall order. (pg. 264)
[W]hat... about the nature of this relationship? (pg. 264)
We may begin by considering the individual human being as a relatively independent sub-totality, with a sufficient recurrence and stability of his total process (e.g., physical, chemical, neurological, mental, etc.) to enable him to subsist over a certain period of time. In this process we know it to be a fact that the physical state can affect the content of consciousness in many ways. (The simplest case is that we can become conscious of neural excitations as sensations.) Vice versa, we know that the content of consciousness can affect the physical state (e.g., from a conscious intention nerves may excite, muscles may move, the heart-beat change, along with alterations of glandular activity, blood chemistry, etc.). (pg. 264-265)
In the implicate order… the mind enfolds mater in general and therefore the body in particular. Similarly, the body enfolds not only the mind but also in some sense the entire material universe. (pg. 265)
This kind of relationship has in fact already been encountered in section 4, where we introduced the notion of a higher-dimensional reality which projects into lower-dimensional elements that have only a non-local and non-causal relationship but also just the sort of mutual enfoldment that we have suggested for mind and body. So we are led to propose further that the more comprehensive, deeper, and more inward actuality is neither mind nor body but rather a yet higher-dimensional actuality, which is their common ground and which is of a nature beyond both. Each of these is only a relatively independent sub-totality and it is implied that this relative independence derives from a higher-dimensional ground in which mind and body are ultimately one (rather as we find that the relative independence of the manifest order derives from the ground of the implicate order). (pg. 265)
In this higher-dimensional ground the implicate order prevails. Thus within this ground, what is is movement which is represented in thought as the co-presence of many phases of the implicate order. (pg. 266)
[W]e do not say that mind and body causally affect each other, but rather that the movements of both are the outcome of related projections of a common higher-dimensional ground. (pg. 266)
Of course, even this ground of mind and body is limited. At the very least we have evidently to include matter beyond the body. (pg. 266)
So it will be ultimately misleading and indeed wrong to suppose, for example, that each human being is an independent actuality who interacts with other human beings and with nature. Rather, all these are projections of a single totality. As a human being takes part in the process of this totality, he is fundamentally changed in the very activity in which his aim is to change that reality which is the content of his consciousness. To fail to take this into account must inevitably lead one to serious and sustained confusion in all that one does. (pg. 266)
Let us now consider briefly what may be said about time in this total order of matter and consciousness. (pg. 267)
The fundamental law… is that of the immense multidimensional ground; and the projections from this ground determine whatever time orders there may be. Of course, this law may be such that in certain limiting cases the order of moments corresponds approximately to what would be determined by a simple causal law. Or, in a different limiting case, the order would be a complex one of a high degree which, as indicated in chapter 5, approximate what is usually called a random order. These two alternatives cover what happens for the most part in the domain of ordinary experience as well as in that of classical physics. Nevertheless, in the quantum domain as well as in connection with consciousness and probably with the understanding of the deeper more inward essence of life, such approximations will prove to be inadequate. One must then go to a consideration of time as a projection of multidimensional reality into a sequence of movements. (pg. 268-269)
Such a projection can be described as creative, rather than mechanical, for by creativity one means just the inception of new content, which unfolds into a sequence of moments that is not completely derived from what came earlier in this sequence or set of such sequences. What we are saying is, then, that movement is basically such a creative inception of new content as projected from the multidimensional ground. In contrast, what is mechanical is a relatively autonomous sub-totality that can be abstracted from that which is basically a creative movement of unfoldment. (pg. 269)
How, then, are we to consider the evolution of life as this is generally formulated in biology? First, it has to be pointed out that the very word ‘evolution’ (whose literal meaning is ‘unrolling’) is too mechanistic in its connotation to serve properly in this context. Rather, as we have already pointed out above, we should say that various successive living forms unfold creatively. Later members are not completely derived from what came earlier, through a process in which affect arises out of cause (though in some approximation such a causal process may explain certain aspects of the sequence). The law of this unfoldment cannot be properly understood without considering the immense multidimensional reality of which it is a projection (except in the rough approximation in which the implications of the quantum theory and of what is beyond this theory may be neglected). (pg. 269-270)
Our overall approach has thus brought together questions of the nature of the cosmos, of matter in general, of life, and of consciousness. All of these have been considered to be projections of a common ground. This we may call the ground of all that is, at least in so far as this may be sensed and known by us, in our present phase of unfoldment of consciousness. Although we have no detailed perception or knowledge of this ground it is still in a certain sense enfolded in our consciousness, in the ways in which we have outlined, as well as perhaps in other ways that are yet to be discovered. (pg. 270)
Is this ground the absolute end of everything? In our proposed views concerning the general nature of ‘the totality of all that is’ we regard even this ground as a mere stage, in the sense that there could in principle be an infinity of further development beyond it. At any particular moment in this development each such set of views that may arise will constitute at most a proposal. It is not to be taken as an assumption about what the final truth is supposed to be, and still less as a conclusion concerning the nature of such truth. Rather, this proposal becomes itself an active factor in the totality of existence which includes ourselves as well as the objects of our thoughts and experimental investigations. Any further proposals on this process will, like those already made, have to be viable. That is to say, one will require of them a general self-consistency as well as consistency in what flows from them in life as a whole. Through the force of an even deeper, more inward necessity in this totality, some new state of affaires may emerge in which both the world as we know it and our ideas about it may undergo an unending process of yet further change. (pg. 270)
With this we have in essence carried the presentation of our cosmology and our general notions concerning the nature of the totality to a natural (though of course temporary) stopping point. From here on we can further survey it as a whole and perhaps fill in some of the details that have been left out in this necessarily sketchy treatment before going on to new developments of the kinds indicated above. (pg. 271)
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