Saunterers

northern california this winter

2010-03-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

Issabelle allende mentioned at a town meeting in seattle, that california had plummeted from 3rd in literacy (when i was attending college, back in the 60's) to 43rd. with this winter's visit into california, i reacquainted myself with old haunts, such as berkeley. my saunterings indicated to me that the resiliency, which califorinia is known for still abides; she will rise again
more later

this fall jeryman brown is taking california for broke (running for governer of californian) into the new planatary conversation, alon the lines of the intuitive .wave, as east has met west and the aftermath of the trending evolution of cooperation. more on what i mean by that that coming up...

wandering the coast
still
staying in a gazebo
in dogtown, marin county
surrounded
by turkey vultures
rancid oats
cooked sent the swarm signal
standing spun
out in decadent side walk
as the rain
comes out of the sky
the fragrant
winter smell of rose spores
wind blown
from other places
with pussy
willows blossoms
i listened to berkely poet
Robert Hass and sonoma poet
Michael Ondaatje; their
converstation struck my memory
i remember Hass who read at the
charles olson 100 celebration
we were younger
then, yet still carrying on regardless
these academic poets talking
about walt whitman
when i left
their presence
like walt i gazed
vastly at the starried night cycles spiraling
with the wind in my
lonely wait for a ride home
with flowers
and poetry where life abides

the new thinking for humanities success

2009-06-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Livingry Dwellings

Regarding the perspectives, which I sent to you a few months ago, I will repeat them again at the end of this set of statements, which appear below. Although the models at best are scaffolds of what the near future will look like, the notions presented in my last post go together with the Buckminster Fuller’s idea of design for Livingly. The caveat, Buckminster Fuller’s idea, of ownership becoming obsolete by default, and people traveling and living, cannot happen unless human beings change their values.
One of my own concerns has been how can humanity have a standard of living in a way, which does the least damage to the earth. As I see it, a combination of mass produced dwellings, with appropriate use of materials will develop what Buckminster Fuller called Livingry for fulfilling the basic human needs of the nine to 11, billion people, or whatever the number turns out to be living on this planet. In short the emergence of partnerships using materials gleamed from NASA, the Airplane Industry and the wisdom of local indigenous people of all cultural backgrounds. These partnerships will coordinate the use of materials, which will be based on wise use with a criteria continuum of scarcity to surplus. i. e. , carbon alloyed fibers, or bamboo. In other words, these materials will be used in the most ecological suitable manner within the context of the environment; the aim is to be as least toxic as possible…Malcolm Wells the underground architect’s statement that a house should simulate wilderness is a good place to begin. See: http://www.malcolmwells.com/

The relativity of microclimates and the cultures, which have adapted are factors, which determine the structure, and lay out of dwellings; and what materials are useable; in modern times the synthesis of materials, which have come out of research for warfare, in a wry way have contributed to the state of the art of improving the lot of humanities living situation and perhaps minimizing, if not eliminating war. Some of the people aspiring to the design of mass produced geodesic domes, will eventually be mentioned. In order to break the ice, I propose that a place to begin with the domes is in recreational areas, such as, the San Juans, the Greek islands, BAJA California Peninsula, etc. Tent companies such as Stephenson Warmlite http://www.warmlite.com/start.htm, and Nemo http://www.nemoequipment.com/nemo are to be used with Real Estates represented in these environments. Both designers have used principles and made products used by the Airline Industry and by NASA.

Eventually the emergence of mass produced domes are to take place in areas on the planet where growth of population is estimated to be higher, in Africa, such as Liberia 4.8 percent per year population growth, also in what comes under the rubric of the Near East; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Rate_of_increase.
Although, it is not possible to know the details, emerging from the aforementioned co ordinations of those involved with the distribution of the suitable materials in these aforementioned domains. I speculate that the new co ordinations at first will be along the lines of the methods used by the U-Haul company launched their rental truck for people on the move in the US in the last forty to fifty years? Regarding sorting out the least wasteful way to use materials the architect Witold Rbczynski pointed out in one of his books that the materials that require a lot of energy in synthesis can often test out more suitable in the long run than one might suppose. In other words, local materials like straw or cob are not always the best design, what comes under the rubric of high tech might turn out, as the most suitable for materials in the design process of geodesic domes Witold Rybczynski Paper Heroes: A Review of Appropriate Technology  Anchor Press Doubleday 1980

In retrospect the mass production of geodesic domes will emerge by individuals taking initiative; such an example is the remarkable Yacht designer Starling Burgess the unsung hero largely responsible for making the Dymaxion car viable See: http://www.coachbuilt.com/des/f/fuller/fuller.htm. The emerging trend of the new energy use and the demographic shifts in population due to migration might bring in the use of these Livingry/ dwellings in ways yet unforeseeable. Michael John Gorman’s book on Buckminster Fuller aim was to get dwellings to be airborne falls hand in hand with his aim of ownership becoming onerous. People would be traveling around enjoying the rich cultural heritage of past and present on the planet When the new accounting system emerges along the lines of the aforementioned proposals of Hazel Henderson and Bernard Lieater, and with the use of hydrogen and it fuel cells through be it disbursed Grid as Amory Lovins would have it with his proposal of smart garage or a GENI grid, as mentioned at end … The Boston Globe review of Gorman’s take on what Buckminster Fuller was striving for is represented below. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/10/23/buckys_world/

In Buckminster Fuller’s lifetime, he was not naïve about the malaise in existing cities. He aimed to make changes in contemporary cities. In one of Fuller’s earlier books 4d Timelock he had proposals of dwellings in the alleys of major cities, which could be occupied ASAP. In one of Harry Nilsson’s album covers that he co authored with John Lennon they have a picture of the domes constructed in alleys of cities for use.

On another note, although, the intentions might be genuine an example of the flotsam and jetsam still going on in the architectural profession is represented in this below talks about the building of future will be in factories. I suspect the factories of the future will be in open air will be different than the factories, which are currently used

By Majeski, John Publication: Real Estate Weekly Date: Wednesday, July 2 2008

Perhaps the word best describes Italian architect David Fisher's design for an 80-story skyscraper in Dubai that would become the planet's first tower with the ability to move. The so-called "shape-shifting" Dynamic Tower would allow each floor to rotate independently around a central and static core. Work on the $700 million project will begin in the next few weeks while a second and smaller tower of 70 stories--Moscow's Rotating Tower--has entered the "advanced design stage." Eventually, Fisher plans on expanding to New York City and elsewhere in the world. The Dubai and Moscow projects will be completed in 2010 and will move thanks to wind turbines located between each of the floors.” I was thinking, 'How can we use the wind instead of fighting the wind?"' Fisher said before a horde of international journalists at last week's unveiling at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. The floors will move so slowly that those inside will not notice the change at all, Fisher said. When asked about how plumbing connections would work on a moving building, he compared the technology to connectors used to refuel airlines in the air. Dynamic Tower's first 20 floors will consist of office space, floors 21 through 35 will feature a luxury hotel and floors 36 through 70 will be resident apartments. The remaining top 10 floors are reserved for penthouse villas. Living in this Jetsons-like environment will not come cheaply. Fisher said the spaces will cost $3,000 psf, meaning units will run between $3.99 million (1,330 s/f) and $38.7 million for a villa (12,900 s/f). The penthouses are custom-made and will include an indoor swimming pool, voice activated features and a special elevator that will bring cars right to residents' doors, Fisher said.In addition to wind turbines, solar panels will be incorporated to generate energy for not only the building but off-site, too.So where did Fisher come up with an idea for a moving building? Inspiration struck years ago when he was in a Manhattan apartment that had views of both the East and Hudson rivers. He began wondering how everyone could have fantastic and changing views."I call this building, 'Designed by life, shaped by time,'" Fisher said of Dynamic Tower, whose major investor is Dubai businessman Sheikh Mejren bin Sultan.The moving floors will not only provide changing landscapes to those inside, but it will also alter the form of the overall building. And motion is not the only thing that sets Fisher's vision apart. The tower will be assembled completely from prefabricated parts, cutting down construction costs by 10 percent and reducing each floor's completion time from six weeks to one week, Fisher said. The buildings' factories are in Italy."The buildings of the future will be done in a factory--like everything else," Fisher said.Unlike the Dubai tower, the bottom floors in the Moscow project will not rotate and will be filled with office and retail space. The Mirax Group of Moscow is investing in and developing that structure.When asked what assurance people have that the ambitious buildings will actually come to fruition, Fisher acknowledged that he has never built a skyscraper before."I consider myself lucky," he said, elaborating that it may have helped him to think outside of the box architecturally.Fisher, who studied and taught architecture at the University of Florence, is most experienced in prefabrication and construction technologies sector. But in no uncertain terms, Fisher said his plans will revolutionize the industry. "Today's life is dynamic, so the space we are living in should be dynamic as well, adjustable to our needs that changing continuously, to our concept of design and to our mood," he said. "In other words, buildings will be alive."

Recently Mikhail Gorbachev has pointed out what is happening with solar energy using countries, as a boundary.http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/technical-articles/generation/solar/globalgreen.org/PR-solar.pdf

I extend Gorbachev’s analysis to include the values of energy savings of Buckminster Fuller’s proposals on domes within domes as illustrated in Chapter 6 World Game Page 198 Fuller gives an example of automatic air conditioning due to the Bernoulli effect due too the domes curvature… On a hot summer day in New York City more heat ends up thrown out into the street due to the air conditioned units and the high rise building have a trapped inversion of air, which is quite stagnating. Mind you, many other points of contention on the energy saving values of geodesic domes when properly built are asserted by RBF in the aforementioned chapter. Critical Path St. Martin’s Press 1981

I surveyed the literature and clearly the mass production of domes for Livingry does not yet exist. Alas! Yet, there are examples of people designing in the spirit of what Fuller was proposing. Jay Baldwin, who worked with Buckminster Fuller for many years, has designed a pillow dome with the aim to grow food on rooftops in urban areas. Some of the salient points of this design is the tefzel, which is a Dupont trademark is a translucent membrane and will prevent the deterioration from UV light, and yet will let in just the right amount of light to grow plants; in other words the climate control is quite elegant. I might ad, that most green houses in the US are heated by oil. The state of Massachusetts gets 80% of its tomatoes from oil based hot houses from Tennessee, and that is in the dead of summer http://www.nature.my.cape.com/greencenter/pdf/dome1985.pdf

Norman Foster another protégé of Buckminster Fuller has many innovative projects; his reputation is international. On appearances the stature of Norman Foster’s achievements would suggest, that he has great capability to mass produce geodesic domes, yet the question remains, if his organization can muster it. Buckminster Fuller was fond of saying that it was the integrity of the individual that made the difference in the final analysis!

http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Practice/Default.aspx

Tony Gwilliam, who I met at the 1976 World game, has an intuition that astounds me on the elegance of design. In 1976 he showed us a video on how his design team worked together represented h the makings of a home in a suitcase, which was called Maintainer, and I might ad a shower was included. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that he is still working on the ecological village plan in Bali and marketing Tea Houses http://www.rcolt.org/Living%20Treasures%20Archives/gwilson8c.htm

Don Richter, who worked with Fuller, has the successful design company Temcor with designs all over the planet. The South Pole is covered with a geodesic dome designed by Temcor. Stay tuned for possible turns to play coming up. http://www.temcor.com/

Einar Thorsteinn an architect, who is living in Berlin working as a visual artist/thinker, has the fortune to have learned from Frei Otto, and Buckminster Fuller; they understood nature’s design. He has proposed a village on glacier mountaintops of Iceland, where the geysers flow freely. http://www.einarthorsteinn.com/h-city.html

I end this presentation with an aspiration that the young of heart (all ages) take on the challenge of making the world work for everyone. Buckminster Fuller, often said, if the humanity survives it will be due to love, truth and youth…

Atlases

file:///Users/nickconsoletti/Documents/One%20Planet%20Many%20People.html
http://na.unep.net/OnePlanetManyPeople/index.php
http://www.earthprint.com/publications.php?catid=Natural%20Resources
Africa atlas
http://www.unep.org/dewa/Africa/AfricaAtlas/PDF/en/Africa_Atlas_Full_en.pdf
http://atlas.aaas.org/flash/
Synergy is about relationships; what I propose below is an attempt to probe into the some of the questions regarding efficient planning, which would contribute to making everyone a success. I do not know what is the most important priority. From my point of view the determination of issues, and their implementation by humanity happens best in a self-organizational manner, whatever it maybe.
Lifelong learning (all ages) needs to be whole-heartedly supported as stated in the book "Turning Leaning Right side Up: Putting Education Back On Track" by Russell Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg Wharton Publishers 2008. The aforementioned writers make many salient points, the most striking to me, that the financial expenditure of the "educational industrial complex's infrastructure is a financial drain, along with the military industrial complex" The financial expenditures are beyond belief. A good place to begin for students is to underwrite their debt, whoever owes the debt, and whatever the cost. If communities/individuals are left alone to self organize, in due course genuine projects demonstrating competence will be launched. An example of a worthwhile project is communication between planetariums, where the communication of relevant data using google earth i. e. Lets take the planning issues, along the lines of ecology and energy uses by humanity. One proposal: three thousand planetariums on the planet connected to google earth broadcasting the pertinent data on large screens for people participating on decision making schemes, let say of Stafford beer's book "Team Syntegrity" or whatever emerges from the such exploration. Joe Clinton, who worked with R Buckminster Fuller on a NASA project, proposes with other colleagues linking with google earth see: http://www.planetarium.net/. There are probes by many individuals into questions regarding ecological issues, what ever they may be, as well as how we distribute energy that is so everyone has a good standard of living.

One controversy regarding a planetary grid system, which Buckminster fuller proposed, which his students are rigorously exploring. This GRID would connect electricity use around the planet. A good example of what this grid system would represent is articulated in Malcolm Greenstuart's proposal for linking of Solar Energy through the Desert of Australia into China vis -a- vis linked benign converting solar systems. For elucidation see: www.cosmicaccounting.net. Moreover, Peter Meisen has taken it upon himself to represent a model of what a global electrical grid system would look like http://www.geni.org/, along the lines of the proposals of R. Buckminster Fuller. On the other hand Amory Lovins, who started the Rocky Mountain Institute proposes a dispersed grid system, which includes, the local use of fuel cells and hydrogen, Lovins argues this dispersed grid system is much more secure, than the so far very cursorily mentioned by me, planetary grid system: http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/01/the-hydrogen-powered-fut.html

So far, the thinking of Richard Buckminster Fuller has influenced mostly everyone mentioned. Bernard Lietaer also inspired by Fuller, who was involved in designing the EURO has a set of proposals regarding the new planetary accounting system emerging: http://www.lietaer.com/home.html, as well, as Hazel Henderson: http://hazelhenderson.com/. In short, the aforementioned are proposing an integration of societies values with a human concern for everyone on the planet with an attempt to calculate new accounting ledgers that makes everyone a success.

The World Health Organization defines health: "one who is recovering from insult and or assault and one how is seeking and solving problems". The website, which is mentioned below in my estimation has made a significant contribution to humanity. This contribution is the work of Dr Andrew Saul, as represented on his web site http://wwwdoctoryouself.com/ Big PHARMA seems to me opposed to the proposals of orthomolecular medicine, or nutritional medicine, which is elucidated on Saul's website, one of the inspirations for Saul's inception of the above website was initiated by the chemist Linus Pauling, who mightily probed into the notion of the new nutritional medicine. Yet the question remains

apple care and more

2008-10-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

whilst i was on the oregon coast, apparently a power surge, destroyed the power adapter
of my mac book computer. also, the battery had been waning in the last months finally giving out,only about a half hour without plugging in to an electrical outlet. hence i called apple care, and they sent the adapter to an address. then i requested a battery and that came the power did not turn; so i sent it to apple care again. the apple technicians found a fried computer, which came as a surprise to me at first, but when i think of the last two years traveling around, and what not in retrospect i was lucky. the apple care representatives, who i communicated with were amazing, and with an exemption i had a new breath, as it were, and i can still do my work. thank you again apple care representatives from the bottom of my heart.

ramblings on the mediocrity of blogs

2007-11-11T08:21:00.000-08:00

greetings

i am reading a biorgraphy on paul maccready quite an engineer of the air model plane circuit yet even he said
that it is the ecological context that overides and abides not just individual inventing?
it seems that the blog trending of lots of hot items made out of the ordinary musings of daiy living are starting
to reveal them along the lines of the classic trending of rising to ones levil of mediocrity. as will shakespheare said " much
ado about nothing". humanity is still being rough rided by nebishes and a lot of words strung together on a blog are not going to turn information into action. the post moderns dictum of the incredulity of meta narratives holds sway with me.

gary snyder years later wholeness a lah: poetry/art/science/philosophy abides

2007-01-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

gary snyders's ariticle entittled writers and the war agains nature published in url below

sums up art and poetry in context with ecology which the likes of frijf capra, and yours truly subcribe to as a critera

for a science of wholeness if you think, i am woofing you, on the aformentioned notion of wholeness, see the work

of brian goodwin, who has designed a holistif science curriculum for schumacner college. see url below, for more on

schumacher college... btw, i am an alumni where i attended david bohm and the implicate order workshop many moons ago

so sayeth dr. suess...

http://www.resurgence.org/2006/snyder239.htm

gary snyder years later

2006-12-31T13:20:00.000-08:00

i spent some time in the early 70's in berkeley gary snyder spoke once, he was talking about the need for us to go camoflague years later, as my attrition curve started to happen about the implicatons of the notion of ecology, i started to savvy what he meant. at any rate, has as an article in resurgence magazine " writers and the war against nature"
also, check out ervin laszlo's more recent book "chaos point":the world at the crossroads" ervi seems to think we have about six years to reach a higher ground for a quality standard of living for the humans on this planet. yet, what is unclear is what does it mean if we still stay the way we are?????? could it be we look like the sci fie movies in the late 50's cyclops one eye
or the norm is how rude we can be to each other

nick

sauntering this winter musing with no answer

2006-04-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

hi
this winter i spent mainly holed up in seattle and am now in pdx
walking from hawthorne off of powell's bookstore to psu and back
enjoying the spring days as they unfold.
i have been wandering in a seemingly meaningless circumvention of walking from coffee shop to coffe shop in the tradition of my mentor
david bohm. he would walk out his ideas on the streets of london
walking up to ten miles with stops at cafe (according to an interview with dorris lessing) the brits coffee shops are reminisint of the 60's in US?
so can one/many do anything to change a dominant culture?
i do not know, but for sure, i have not found an answer.
one of my mentor's david bohm often walked around ten miles a day working out ideas with colleagues, and when they got back to the office they would have the secretary type out the oral musings, which they felt were worthy or recording... werner heisenberg a physicist from germany walked from ratskeller to ratskeller working out his musings along the lines of the way david bohm did.
As the systems theorist stafford beer said: see his book "Team Syntegrity" by definition assertions are the mind reflecting on itself and do not mean anything...

winter time northern hemisphere

2006-02-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

here it is almost half way into winter and the cosmological natural orders seem to subtly swaying

socail relationships more than one could suppose. take for example that most people in africa are only on average

fifteen years of age. how does that affect areas where waste is still not considered a valuable resource?

the students don't get it fuller had it right

2005-06-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

their are a lot of computer programs that aim to represent nonlinearity using the cartesian coordinates. kirby urner sees fullers as in the literature, philosophy game, fuller was that and so much more with his dogged assertion of allegiance to the integrity of the whole intuition is the highest form of intelligence. fuller's stance on integrity, as the most signicant posturinga little individual can take had no quarantees, that some of us would not end up in the cold. alas!

r. buckminster fuller in his work Synergetics 1 & 11 states his contention on how nature works.i. e. , 3.14 does not exist in nature; yet, it is claimed to be a useful tool by many of fuller's students. russell ackoff, the system theorist, whose notion of idealized planning, fuller used for his planning, scheme for the world game, once wrote, somewhere in one of his books, that architecture schools have not produced one architect who has been outstanding.

ackoff refers to the apprentiships of people like of frank lloyd wright; be that as it may, the students of fuller have at best, pieced together a lot of reduction; with very little useful to the plight of the human condition. i. e ., moshe safdie, the mc for the expo 67 in montreal (fuller's taj mahal) has gone on to build one piecemeal buliding after another;. many would consider him one, who has advanced the architecture field, more than fuller. this kind of thinking is an example of how entrained the reductional thinking is on this planet. Shall we accept such doggerl, as kurt vonnegut said "so it goes" ???????

hugh kenner said, that when fuller found, that the world was not going to go geodesic, he spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel of design. my own take, on kenner's assertion fuller was a realist, and new that ownership and all its conundrums would bring in a new world if there was going to be one, by default. the mobile trailers with the retirees are in motion and the heisst is incredicbe. when the chance comes to refine the bugs, after a few prototypes my suspicion is that the beauty as represented in the taj mahal and nomadic bands of long ago, will be shown with the new synthetics to be such elagantly designed houses making the 415,000 dollar property values of the clunker dwelling obsolete. these houses masquerade as good design in most major cities

0ne of these day,s there will be an incitefull uprising like the housing riots in paris many a year ago maybe with insite and a democracy that works bllodshead might be averted. as the poet in exile jim morrison said once we are waiting for the sun...

what have you

2005-05-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

five years after i finished my doctorate i was notified by e-mail by the existing president of the union

I &U that it is still accredited which was not the reason i matriculated . my aim was to get the proposal

on dialogue that theoretical physicist david bohm and colleagues. see http://www.nickc-c.com/

the back plan was to see if i could muster some resources and work on bucky fuller's world game notions.

at any rate, today i am thinking on where group events such as music festivals and the patterns

of evolution they can undergo to contribute to educatings people about the challenges facing humanity

john todd (living machines) says that the twentyfirst centure is one where ecology and ecodesing will

abide that is if we are so lucky to survive as a scecies. oil peak production is around the yeat 2008

which means that right about now the outsourcing trend will no be tenable

wallmart has shoes for forty dollars which one can get at rei for 200 they come from the same factory

in china and are the same shoe with different tags.

back to he musical events with a few computers and a couple of screens one can run

some amazing suggestive stratagies on ways to proceed bringing the geoscope idea

that fuller felt would lead to particiopatory planning.

stay tuned

pike st market seattle busker organizers

2005-05-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

from 1986-1992 i took my hobby of playing music, now and again, rarely commercially, that is i did play here and there

but only on the spot. And started playin around the country seattle was one of my stops where i played on the ave

at night in a quite spot. in retrospect the scene had started to get harder people like baby gramps had done some time on the

ave. at any rate that scene to me had become untenable for playing music by 1991 i went off to europe where i was recieved

very well. the wonders of environments which can break one or make one?

i have visited the pike st market in seattle several times in the last two weeks

mainly i was catching up with artis who i met in santa cruz back in the 70's

he is still playing those spoons his work riminded me of the ole cave players way back in the caves of cassis off the south

coast of france. maybe sort of like the original puppet mimetics. in other words like th puppet expresion of basic human

experience in the round. for those interested www.pikemarketbuskers.org sept 18, 2005

gordon pask on learning theory and oswego last summer

2005-02-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

greetings:

i received two cds ( one more coming up) from john belt who co ordinates the

educational technology design at oswego new york the class was entitled

"synergetica in the classroom" with joe clinton at the helm

his presentations on approches to geometrical form are rendered throughout

the cd with the works of the various students

for my part i had a three axis four symmetty shaped prototyped as musical instrument

in potential ( just a a crude prototype) which has been done by andrew culver

a composer, who worked with john cage, and traveled with buckminster fuller

playing what looked like an electronic saw ( vintage logger's entertainment with

the saw blade bent appropriately.. .

there is so much here i. e. , duncan stuart's articualtions of precomputer days

shows such acuity at geometrical duals and transformations rendered graphically...

duncan came up with a practical approach to build domes...

investment money

2005-01-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

i have been wondering about investment money and it seems to me that

those who have rarely get their resources to those who could make good use of it

the future of money seems to be a mixed bag of electronic credit, barter, what have

you?

any views

nick

retrospect on buckminster fuller: how i discovered him

2005-01-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

greetings:

as i recall i came to fuller in my college days

at long beach state there was a copy of ideas and integrities

the cover and especially the colors on the cover with those structures

drew me in

fuller talked about our conditioned reflexes and after so many years of parroted education it was god sent by it i mean fuller's espousals which i still

have not been able to manifest

as it seems what he is talking about takes collaborations of various sorts

a lah synergy

these new school moverment like albany free scholl and montesouri and what have

you steiner's stuff with some question in reservation i can take

at any rate, there is a lot of work to be done

nick

dee hock blogs as wealth wave future

2005-01-03T17:14:00.000-08:00

grettings:

i remember reading a response by dee hock of the chaordic alliance that

the blogs are a currency of the future coming up

someone of hocks capabilities must know something

yet the question remains

kirby urner is dedicated to the bloggs he posts most artfully

his take

it is not clear to me, how this will translate into material advantage

i am patiently waiting for evidence

nick

cover page

2004-12-10T11:51:00.000-08:00

Cover Page
Contextual Essay

A Reflection on Participating in a Dialogue Group in Eugene,

Oregon: Based on "A Proposal by David Bohm and Colleagues"

Project Demonstrating Excellence

submitted to the Union Institute

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Philosophy of Whole Systems

Nick Consoletti

September 20, 1998

Acknowledgements
Thank you to my committee members for support and valuable suggestions: to my core advisor Dr. Kevin Sharpe, adjuncts Dr. Fred Wood and Dr. Alex Gerber, peers Janie Zah and Mark Schroll, and to the second core reader Jose Cedillos. My thanks also to the dialogue participants in Eugene, Oregon, as well as Saral Bohm, Don and Anna Factor, Mike Lowe, Mario Cayer, Peggy Cloverdale, Dr. John McMahon, David Gilbert, William Van der Heuvel, Melissa Nelson, Colin Farish and the participants at Schumacher College. Finally, it would have been impossible to complete this work without copy editing assistance from David Shetzline.

Abstract

This essay reflects my experience of grass roots participation in a dialogue group inspired by physicist David Bohm (1917 - 1992). Participants met in a circle two hours bi-weekly to explore the content of consciousness. Participants’ thoughts and feelings were used as the basis of sharing meaning by examining and playing with their assumptions. The approach was egalitarian, without a leader, agenda, topic or set purpose. Tacitly, this tended to reveal individual purpose through a process dedicated towards clarifying root causes of contemporary issues. A "Bohmian Dialogue" invites deep inquiry from listening, and subsequent interpretations which attempted to transcend participants’ limits. The genealogy of this dialogue is reflected in the historical tradition of circular seating within indigenous peoples' meetings. Bohmian Dialogues also reflect the contemporary ideas of Dr. Patrick de Mare and others, who suggest that the Greek notion of koinonia (impersonal fellowship) is cosmologically capable of touching intelligence, thereby contributing to the translation of meaning by revealing the understanding of divergent views. All the while, the process of dialogue unfolds recursively. Bohmian Dialogue aims at exploring the limitations of thought. Such understandings contribute to the harmonization of individual, social, cultural, and cosmological dimensions by releasing collective insight, or proprioception (self awareness), that dissolves fragmentation. The emerging coherence contributes to humanity's living in a sane and secure manner.

Observations about thought occur through the group's words, play, frustrations, and episodes of periodic silence. During this process and during moments of reflection, I observed the interplay between listening and the resistance of non-listening. Among many other phenomena, I observed a profound "shared flow of meaning" among participants. Overall, the intent of this project is to reveal the frustration, play and, for some in the group, the ineffable or cosmic dimension that becomes apparent during human interaction. The question remains whether or not a coherence was achieved within the micro-culture of these Bohmian Dialogues. If indeed such a coherence emerged, it would validate Bohm's notion that such a critical nucleus might point towards the eventual transformation of humanity. Bohm always gave primacy to the importance of imagination. From the quest for wholeness embodied in his dialogues, he anticipated that art, science, and spirituality would ultimately merge.

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Conceptual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti

poetry pages

2004-12-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

Poetry Pages
Contents:
coming up
kingfisher traveler
memorial

Coming Up

after lying on sand
by a lillied pond
a swim together
suddenly through rippled
water Breasts merge
Embracing

THE WEB
THE WEB HAD NO COLORS
RODE BY IT EVERY DAY
THE BRIDGE THAT HARBORED
THIS WEB
SEEMED NOT THERE
THE SAND THAT HARBORED
THIS WEB
SEEMED NOT THERE
WET WITH SEA
ALL WAS IN THE WEB
UNSPOKEN

Buckminster Fuller

EYES a Deep Well

Reflecting Stories

Flourishing

Forever

a formed stone

maybe firm in a stream

not rocked

may be

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falling leaves

2004-12-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

whilst walking in the hintelands i saw japanese mapel leaves

the left an impression on my mind this winter

happenings today

2004-11-21T19:29:00.001-08:00

my money situation is tenuous and i do not know what to do about?

stay posted

happenings today

2004-11-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

my money situation is tenuous and i do not know what to do about?

stay posted

eugene group a record

2004-10-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

Appendix 1: Record of Oregon Dialogue Group
My intention in the following representations of the dialogue group is to give the reader a sense of a meeting where the complete context of this complex phenomena of content and process weaves in and out of each participant in a reciprocal manner. This meeting was recorded two years into the group process of meeting once every two weeks. The number of participants represented the average number as the dialogue group moves on to its fifth year.
In retrospect, as I listened again to the audio recording of the meetings, my impression is that this transcription can give only an inkling of the complex set of processes which ensue in a Bohmian dialogue. The complexity of face-to-face interaction has been clearly stated in Fernando Poyatos’s work: "Deeper Levels of Face-to-Face Interaction" in Language and Communication an Interdisciplinary Journal (1985). Also in retrospect I noticed that even the audio tape of the meeting doesn’t represent the texture of a participant’s experience. For example: one senses many people talking out loud, and then and uncanny single "take" ends up being broadcast, even though there seemed to be many other interpretations vying to be dominant in that particular circling . . . The ineffable component of this multidimensional experience is most difficult to convey to a reader who hasn’t participated on a regular basis. Years ago in Ojai, Stanley Danek -- one of the many unsung pioneers who trekked to California to participate in Bohm’s exploration of dialogue -- invited me to attend a Bohmian meeting. Since this group had been meeting for a while, I was expecting profundity, yet it seemed to be wavering in a nonverbal essence throughout the ninety-minute stint. To my untrained sensibilities most of the statements made by the participants were simple and oxymoronic. Only after I had been involved in this form of dialogue for a while, did I come to appreciate the significance of what appeared to be a lack of depth in the participants’ discourse.
I will leave it to the reader to decide what to conclude about what appears below. As I see it, dialogue does not privilege any one view over any other, in the sense volunteered by one of Bohm’s colleagues, Don Factor: all views are privileged. It is this multifarousness -- apologies to the postmodernists -- which follows along the lines of M. Bakhtin’s contention that the most important endeavor in this exploration is to keep the dialogue going against all odds. As humanity approaches bifurcation, this consideration of ongoing dialogue, which is an ancient idea, will -- in my view -- make a difference. If this difference is not in form, it will be in spirit, along the lines of the "road not traveled", as Robert Frost has proposed, and most recently, cultural historian William Irwin Thomson. (See Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in The Evolution of Consciousness [1998].)
Jeff: Yeah, this is supposed to be a program where I design a research project like you do; I to set it up for you, or like Daniel does it. And my adviser was arguing that there should be group Ph.D.’s, and that’s so far out from the thinking right now.
Daniel: We could bring Mark over. You and I and Mark could get a Ph.D. between the three of us. We could.
Ricardo: You get the P, Merick gets the h and you get the D.
Juanita: I’ll take the period.
Mark: I am not quite sure which one I want?
Juanita: Sounds familiar.
Ned: If you’re really smart, Mark, what you should do is you just gamble with these guys and get the other two letters, so you get the whole deal. Make sure you get that two thirds part though.
Jeff: Would Ricardo or Daniel turn that thing on?
Daniel: Yeah, it’s on.
Jeff: I had to do it at our meeting, and it was really funny. We had to tape the minutes of the meeting.
Ned: Is that a 60 minute tape?
Jeff: It’s forty five each side.
Johan: So when the dialogue really gets good it’ll end.
Jeff: Oh one thing, these newsletters. Recent newsletters, everybody.
Johan: I was reading this magazine and I came across something that struck me as relevant to dialogue, and I would like to read it.
Ricardo: Well, let’s hear it.
Johan: It’s part of one answer from an interview with Wynton Marsalis. I don’t know if you know Wynton Marsalis?
Jeff: He’s a jazz musician right?
Johan: Yeah and also he plays exquisitely in classical and jazz, but he’s artistic director of jazz at Wynton center, and in this interview somebody asks him: "As I understood you, the reason a jazz musician needs to master the history of jazz is to discover the music’s essence. What is it?" And he says: "Some of the essential traits of jazz have nothing to do with music, and others are musical traits. Of the things that don’t just have to do with music, first comes the concept of playing. You take a theme, an idea, and you play with it, just like you play with a ball. If you’re teasing somebody or flirting with somebody, you’re playing with ideas, so you have the spirit of play. Next is the desire to play with other people. That means learning to make room. Take the kid who wants to be the star. You have to teach him the rules of sportsmanship, you have to tell him ‘You have to let the other kids play too.’ When I started playing, my concept of jazz was ‘This means I can solo and people will clap for me. When I joined Art Blakey, he was always telling us, ‘Man, you all gotta play more like a group. When your solo’s over, stop playing it. ‘ Third, playing jazz means learning to respect individuality. You don’t have to agree with me. You can have your own way of thinking and that’s good. You and I, we come together and have a conversation. I consider what you’re saying and I come away thinking ‘It could be true,’ or ‘It’s definitely not true.’ Playing jazz means learning how to reconcile differences even when they’re opposites. That’s why it’s such a great thing for kids to learn. Jazz teaches you how to have a dialogue with integrity."
Daniel: Hm. That’s nice.
Johan: And I like the idea of dialogue with integrity. I don’t know what dimension that adds to it, but it’s sort of means maybe sort of sticking with your character at the same time that you are accepting other people’s character.
Ned: One of Mark’s observations last time was insightful, and it was . . . he pointed out that . . . what he seemed to say was that we were saying one thing and doing another . . . which is not integrity. And to a certain extent I recognize this problem. That is, intention is to be . . . to have integrity . . . the intention is there, but what happens is that there’ a huge gap in understanding of conveying that . . . from your own experience to the event that you want to participate in. You jump in there with all this experience, saying I can say something here, I’ve got something to say,’ you jump in there and it’s not appropriate, and you suddenly find yourself treading water very rapidly, and you’re just not connected. There’s no coordination between the two.
Mark: Perhaps, a group of musicians coming from very different backgrounds, who are coming together to do jazz are very different from each other . . .
Johan: Right.
Mark: You know, they gather to do jazz and they all have these preconceptions, you know? But, who knows what jazz is? Perhaps they read the theory . . . how we should do jazz, not how it should be done.
Of course they are musicians and so they have a tendency to do this.
Ned: But there’s definitely a language.
Johan: I was going to make a similar point. I mean, you could almost consider a dialogue as a jazz thing and it’s very important for, you know, one player goes in a certain direction, and does something and it’s accompanied and then when he stops somebody else goes and if it’s disconnected, you know, it’s not jazz. But somehow, it relates, back and forth.
Mark: And we’ve been saying this about dialogue ever since we started, but it’s rare that we actually manage to keep it going.
Ricardo: Part of that for me is the expectation that I have about what I think it should be or what I would think jazz needs to be. And then I expect everyone else to be pursuing jazz in the same way. But they’re not, they’re pursuing jazz in their own way, and so you’re bumping up against a collective understanding, or expectation and an individual expectation.
Mark: Here’s where the dialogue process differs a little and we can poke holes in the metaphor. Because one observation that you could make is that, where dialogue breaks down, this is an important moment for us.. This is the learning part of it . . . This is where we see.
Johan: Well I don’t know that it does break down. It’s like let’s say we’re a one two three four an octet, a ten dectet, we’re an inept player of dialogue, I mean we’re like a group who get together to do jazz and they’re somewhat inept at it. It goes for awhile and then it breaks down.
Ned: Snake oil jazz.
Johan: Yeah . . . and maybe, so I’m rebuilding the analogy, and I’m saying we start our dialogue and it goes for awhile and then something, a monkey wrench goes in there.
Ricardo: And nobody’s willing to pay.
Juanita: That’s right. We don’t have an audience for this or anything.
Mark: OK. I want to push this a little further.
Ned: Ya, I think it’s worth it.
Mark: So what happens when it breaks down is sometimes, because we’re talking about breakdown, that’s a relative, uh . . . I mean it’s as if . . . well, the question is, is it as if a group of jazz musicians came to a point where they weren’t together and the stopped and they said ‘what went wrong?
Johan: Yeah! Right! Yeah right!
Mark: This is not quite the same thing because . . .
Johan: Yeah
Mark: . . . because the discussion of what went wrong is itself part of the dialogue, we’re still playing in a sense. And yet at the same time, people made this comment ‘we’re not doing dialogue we’re talking about it,’ and I think an appropriate comment is ‘well, we’re still doing dialogue while we’re talking about it. But I think there’s both their seed of truth. I think it’s possible to that . . . to see. . .
Johan: It both ways . . .
Mark: . . . both viewpoints as pointing to something important.
Daniel: It’s interesting that on that handout I just gave you that we spoke about on the phone is on complimentarity, where you have the notion of a whole that requires necessary parts that seem to be opposites or be opposed. The metaphor I thought of is . . .the other aspect of dialogue is it’s like a string quartet, where you’re doing a classical mode and each of us are playing our own voice, our own instrument with the emphasis on diction and performance. So we lapse into this business of trying to speak with great Žlan with our own instruments, and then we’re in a sort of classical quartet kind of thing. And then we go into jazz. It’s a different kind of music.
Ned: Improvisation.
Daniel: And I would say is that when we tend to get classical it’s when we get subjective and that’s when dialogue just doesn’t work. We’re each playing to our own ear.
Mark: It becomes repetitive.
Ricardo: Or in the purest sense of jazz for me it could conceivably break down when someone lapses into their own instrument but loses the rest of the group, so that at your . . . Your question was ‘what do they all do, they all, as a group, do they then say ‘what went wrong?’
Well, yeah. What went wrong was that I went off on my instrumentation and no one else followed along and so then we lost the connective.
Ned: I’d like to paraphrase Louie Armstrong, and say that if you have to ask what dialogue is you’ll never know.
Johan: Very good.
Mark: Well, okay, I want to twist that. And say, perhaps if we really want to dialogue we have to not know what it is.
Ned: Interesting spin. Interesting spin.
Juanita: Ya.
Mark : Ya, I literally twisted that
Ned: Are you running a public relations campaign ?
Mark: . . . Well it gets back to, it links to some points that we made before, thinking that we know what dialogue is, thinking that we know what we’re supposed to be doing, prevents anything to even happen.
Juanita: Yeah.
Mark: And it also leads perhaps to conflict of different point of views about what we should be doing. But I think that it’s a very hard thing not to know.
Ned: It’s a very hard thing to talk about dialogue and to talk about thinking about dialogue . . . thinking about thinking . . . I mean, these are terrible ways of using language because we don’t have the vocabulary.
Johan: It’s always seemed to me that I’ve always been puzzled by everybody’s certainty about what dialogue was because to me it’s always been a big mystery.
Mark: Perhaps you can’t do any better than ‘mystery.’
[Laughter]
Ricardo: Definitely what my problem is is clarity!
Juanita: I think that really addresses an issue that we . . . that there a need to know, a need to be grounded in knowing, and that the letting go of needing to know is sort of stepping into chaos or something. So it’s not comfortable. But I really believe that’s where we. . . I think, as a result of last time or some sort of thoughts had been circulating after the last couple of months . . . it’s like I really believe that I need to let go. I need to be a new learner every time I come. I need to learn in a new way. And that my thinking that I know, after two years of doing it, then I get this sense that I am somehow an expert and that comes in my way. And I think that we all -- perceive that we all come in some kind of knowing of what it is, now we know how to do it . . . it’s letting go of that that’s important.
Ned: A lot of my frustration comes from attaching myself to -- whether it be a time a dialogue takes on its debate side or its argument, or its explanations of things. Dialogue takes on all this and metamorphoses. It develops this formless thing that takes on many different forms, but I tend to attach myself to one specific aspect of the dialogue. I get locked into that particular thing, and many times its just conversational, and its not really getting into the idea of inquiry, which is forcing a dissection of what we’re doing here -- why we’re here. We’re not here to chitchat and make small talk; we’re here to really, insightfully generate, by our intention, a focus on being here as a whole, as a community.
Mark: So it’s more than form.
Johan: Yes. And it’s not a performance like a jazz thing.
Ned: An ensemble.
Johan: In other words, in jazz you put out your performance --
Ned: It’s an ensemble.
Johan: Yeah. So, you’re saying the dialogue is more -- wow, I -- Well, it’s more forcing things to go wrong deliberately and inquiring into what went wrong.
Ned: There isn’t any wrong. You see. That’s the point.
Johan: Well, where does the inquiry come in.
Daniel: Well, it’s -- John --
Johan: It’s not wrong. Ya.
Daniel: If it’s an epistemology -- I mean, if it’s a learning process -- We’re supposed to be -- the conceit we have is that we’re on the cutting edge of a way in which we’re trying to keep track and take responsibility for the things we say, and lift ourselves up out of clichŽ, slightly, and become more aware of whether we’re making sense or not. And pressing this enormous conceit is: we’re saying that we’re learning; we’re learning through performing, we’re learning from each other. So, when dialogue fails it’s because learning, which is always a promise, starts to fail for us, and we know one of us is not performing or the wind has gone out of that particular sail.
Johan: Ah.
Faye: In a barely audible voice what was it you were saying . . . you keep pushing your boundaries. You keep pushing into the unknown constantly, expanding in that sense.
Ned: The unknown is a huge abstraction. We really need to be a little more concessive about where we want to go with this particular effort.
Faye: Why do we have to go?
Ned: It seems to me that . . . just for clarification, the idea of the metaphor of a jazz group -- there is a structure to jazz. In order to play together they have to follow a certain form of chords and structure and tune, in order to develop a framework in which to improvise. So, what we’re doing in dialogue all the time is changing this framework around and manipulating each other by our participation.
Ricardo: It seems to me that beyond learning to play a piece together, jazz offers the opportunity to be inspired in some new way, to contribute your portion of the ensemble in a better way than you’ve done before, as opposed to a kind of a concert situation where what you are is part of a collective is better than what you would be individually, but it’s still limited to the quality of the whole. The jazz possibility of the analogy as I’m taking it to my concept of dialogue is that you each bring what you have to offer, but hopefully that’s inspired in some bigger way by the collective. Or, what you’re hearing around you might inspire you then to be something more than you have been before.
Daniel: When Faye said that it’s pushing some boundaries, I thought of My Dinner With Andre and how that film -- that film was taking on a sensibility in the world and making -- creating comedy out of it, but very instructional -- well, yeah, it’s -- I felt My Dinner With Andre was humorous. Perhaps I had some kind of conceit in the way in which I watched the film, and I watched it three time s and the last two times on television so it was a small screen and maybe that distance made me see the comedic aspects to it. But, what I’m saying is that there in these films that we have seen come out of the international community of intellectuals and film writers and so on who are supposed to be on the avant-garde edge -- because that’s way the avant-garde is defined as an aesthetic -- they’ve pushed this element of going out to the point which you just ] -- you’re pushing beyond and beyond and beyond yourself until you step on your tie and fall on your face. And I thought of that comedic aspect to that, and then there was this other film that had been done by a Swedish woman that had to do with physicists, that was an immense amount of conversation -- Mindwalk -- We’re doing a kind of performance like that aesthetically. We’re doing our own little mindwalk in our own little Dinners With Andre here.
Hilary: I wish.
{Laughter}
Ricardo: We’re mostly stepping on our ties.
Jeff: That was the conversation between the physicist Liv Ullmann, the politician Jerry Brown -- sort of -- and the poet, whoever. Is that right?
Juanita: Yeah.
Mark: One aspect of what we’re doing here, occasionally, this doesn’t distinguish it from a Salon.
Daniel: It’s a good point.
Mark: What I have been observing, I have an opinion of what we are doing here in terms of what insight can this give us into the nature of thought, and it seems that it’s basically been mostly a series of associations. Somebody says something and brings up an association in someone else’s’ mind, and so in a sense we’re gong on what the last person said, but it’s all very external, very impersonal. Which is fine because, in principle, because, for me, what I would say -- I wouldn’t say the real dialogue . . .
{Laughter. Comments.} Go ahead say it! There you go! We know you mean it! {Etc.}
Mark: . . . the real -- the inquiry -- the novelty, potentially, is that the place where I can discover something about myself is in the observation -- while I’m watching this -- I’m asking myself, "what is going on? what’s the point of this?" And it’s possible for us to all be doing that, but none of us could ever bring this point up. The reason I bring it up is because I’m not confident that we’re all doing this, but I have the suspicion that this series of associative things is no more than that. We’re all getting stuck in this everyday habit of --
Daniel: Ignoring the uncanny.
Mark: -- of not really watching what we’re doing, not really paying attention, not really asking the question, not really inquiring, but just . . . chatting. I bring this up -- I brought this up before --
Johan: Well, I --
Mark: Because I’m not convinced -- I want you to convince me that we’re all really looking.
Johan: You’re concept there is very tricky because it’s sort of double-edged: if you do nothing but inquire it’s sterile, because what are you inquiring about? And so you have to have the association, maybe people’s emotions getting aroused, before you have something to inquire into. So it’s a double-edged thing. It’s almost as if you have to relax from the inquiry and let it flow until some passions start coming out and then maybe it’s self-inquiry or I inquire into what you meant when you said that last thing. But, it seems to me that the inquiry without the passion, without me slipping into my natural mode of language which exposes, let’s say, thought, in the Bohmian sense, then there’s something to inquire -- In other words, when I slip and say something like Ned called attention about using the word "wrong" and said "well there’s no right and wrong" -- well, there’ something to inquire into: "Why did I say that?" or as soon as he says it I admit "Oh yeah. I didn’t mean that. But why did I say that. But why did I say it. Is this --
Ned: "Why" is only one aspect of the inquiry.
Johan: Yeah.
Ned: the inquiry, there’s many -- anything, any subject can be dissected into many various and sundry ways, taking sections, looking inside of it, looking at the outside of it, looking at the skin of it, looking at -- you know -- all these aspects of it, and it’s our responsibility as an ensemble to pick up another facet to look at.
Johan: But actually, I mean, you could inquire in many ways, but I would think that the whole point of Bohmian dialogue is to inquire in a way that you get a real "Ah-ha!" out of it, you get an insight either into what somebody else is doing or what oneself is doing. In other words, I suddenly get an "Ah-ha!" and understand something about myself -- in other words, just sort of an abstract kind of inquiry -- I mean, what’s the point?
Ned: That’s a good question.
Daniel: Well I think the point that I interjected when Mark was talking this business about the uncanny -- and let us remember that when you associate this word with Freud, and we also associate it with Romantic poets -- whether it’s been forty years since any of us read Freud or Romantic poets, who cares? Freud said "The mind is not master in its own house." In other words, there’ s things going on. John, that’s what -- what you were saying struck me in the simplest way, but I think you were saying something beyond that. For me you were saying that business of when you get to some kind of sublimity or when you see yourself looking into your own abyss, into the void, and you get this uncanny kind of felling where the hair wants to stand up on the back of your neck. That is also supposed to be something that dialogue would deliver us to. And I think that what Mark is saying is that when we start avoiding that and are just skating on the pond, we don’t look down through the ice at all those things down below.
Mark: I think what I’m worried about -- maybe that’s not the right expression -- is that the verbal process and the way this verbal process runs, it seems to hide a lot of -- When I’m listening, you know, when I’m listening to, not just what words are saying, but also looking at what’s the process of thought behind this -- when I’m doing something which is essentially non verbal -- and if I’m trying to -- I can’t talk abut it at the same time. okay, and when I talk about it this is -- right now I’m not engaged in the same kind of observation as I was when I was listening Daniel. There’s something else going on . . .
Ned: Don’t you feel, Mark, that during the process of analyzing -- as soon as you look at what you’re internal dialogue is doing, when you’re looking at it, you’re looking at it . . . it stops.
{Laughter} Johan: Uh, yeah.
Mark: But that’s the point. What happens when the internal dialogue stops, and you’re just listening to it.
Ned: Well, it seems to me that that’s a crucial element in this whole dilemma of the internal wheels and the external wheels, and how these things are intermeshing. You know, we have this ego structure that we are focusing in on as the internal part, like there is an inside me and then there’s, outside of my skin, there’s all you guys, you know. When essentially, there’s -- the ultimate game to me is that we share consciousness, that we get into this mode where we have no bodies, no interior, no exterior, we just have thought, and it’s all out on the table, and the exploration is out here also.
Hilary: What has really bothered me is there seem to be two currents going. One is, so long as somebody’s talking we’re doing dialogue, and I guess I question that; and I know this is going to pre K, but Jeff the first time I came you gave me this handout and I reduplicated it --
Jeff: What is it?
Juanita: And . . . well, ah --
{talking}
Hilary: And to me, I have been reflecting on it, and this speaks so much, and I have had this forever -- But to me this holds the kernel of where we’re trying to go or of what we’re not doing, and that is, {"}Dialogue starts from a willingness to be tentative about what you know{"} and I think, ah -- well, maybe I should just read it: "The focus of dialogue is what we experience, and not our ideas, precepts, belief systems" and all that crap; and all the intellectualizations and all that crap. That’s not what it says -- you know. "You can participate verbally or silently sharing. Dialogue is letting the issue unfold in affection and mutual respect." And I experience that as really missing in this group . . . that we let an issue unfold; and you can only let it unfold if there is affection and mutual respect, because when you trigger something and you don’t feel that there’s a climate of affection and mutual respect, you tell Freud "shut up." And you know, A Dinner With Andre could not have happened if there had not been that. I saw it eight times, the whole time through. "When a reaction arises, neither suppress it nor defend it, but suspend it in the mind and in the group, keeping it constantly available." Ah, you know, we never get close to that. Ah, dialogue is a way of being, the Zen of being, and seeing the Zen of seeing in an unfolding relationship. If we really would move towards that, we would have a chance, if not to be just surface comments.
Juanita: I’m really, I’m anxious to explore this notion that we have that this is not a respectable dialogue. I guess it offends me, so I kind of get a nudge about it, and I need to hear more about what that is for you.
Oh! If I -- well, it says here, um: "Dialogue is letting an issue unfold in affection and mutual support." Um --
What I heard you saying is that you didn’t think we did that, that you didn’t think there was respect, or you didn’t think -- you said something like we certainly don’t fit this --
Hilary: I don’t feel that this climate of affection that encourages -- ah, as to say, ah, "hey yeah, uh, something just grows up that made it stand up on the back of my hair" because the next person may very well not even hear what you said, and go off about something else. You know, that’s a psychological barrier. When you are not heard. Or saying "I disagree," and I think there’s no place for "I disagree." It’s more like looking at it, the Zen of looking at it, and then looking at it together and letting it unfold.
Mark: Well, I wonder if your perception is that you personally are doing this, and that you perceive others as not really doing this.
Hilary: I -- I -- I -- I ah have not experi -- maybe -- There have been a few times that I have experienced this to be happening.
Mark: But I’m wondering -- it seems to me that this could happen, that one person could be following your suggestion, and it really doesn’t matter what other people are doing. In other words, I can follow your suggestion no matter what other people are doing.
Hilary: I -- oh. That had not occurred to me. I thought that everyone has to follow it, because, how can I open up about something if I’m not sure that somebody isn’t going to hit me over the head.
Ricardo: I really think that that’s -- I really think that’s where I have a problem, is that I believe that there then is an expectation that everybody be in the same spot.
Hilary: No.
Ricardo: And that is an impracticality. And that you are responsible for conducting yourself in that way as best you can, but when you start to expect everybody else to be doing it in exactly the same way, you create this terribly grand scheme of "how we will be," rather than the way we are.
Hilary: You made an assumption, that I did not say, that people do it in the same way. What I’m putting forth is if a person does it, it’s up to the rest of the group to let them do it in their way. Ah --
Ricardo: But then --
Hilary: And there ‘s no -- the whole point is that we move with that person to hear that, and in that hearing, um, dialogue occurs because we move. And that there’s -- You’re absolutely right, it totally cannot be that we all follow the same -- but the whole point is that we move with each other to the inch of whatever’s being talked about.
Mark: Okay, so then we still -- The one thing which -- Okay, ah -- what I think Juanita was struck by, I was struck by the same thing as well, is this -- this -- this -- notion that that -- well, the group -- that this mutual respect and affection is not there for you. Now, for me it’s there. I want to say that, to me, I find this group, to me at least -- you know, I do not feel that I am inhibited about bring up things here because I don’t feel affection and mutual respect in the group. So, it’s interesting that you, you say you do feel a lack of mutual respect
Hilary: To be honest, I sometimes um -- I feel battles go out {knocking, and I’m talking about the kind of battles that can sometimes go out.
Juanita: So why is that disrespectful I mean, what’s the problem . . . where is that --
Hilary: I just don’t see that enlightenment.
Mark: Okay, um, well . . .
Ned: One of the difficult things about talking about the past is that --
Hilary: Yeah, I think you’re right.
Ned: Is that we talk about it in terms of bringing it forward into the present and yet there’s still speculation. So, even though the dialogue is not ideal at all times, I think the idea of having a hope that it will be at the next go around -- that aspiration, that point of movement is all important. That we continue that movement.
Hilary: I concur with that. And that means that then when it doesn’t happen that we [have to] speak to it.
Johan: Well. If you know it’s not happening. . . .
Juanita: Then what, {Johan If you know it’s not happening, then what?
Johan: Well I mean . . . I suppose if you know it’s not happening then you can get into this spirit of inquiry, but -- I don’t know. Maybe, maybe I lack some kind of sensitivity or something. I don’t know what I was quite saying.
Mark: Well, I’m feeling something interesting here, and it has nothing to do with what is said -- I know it’s a sort of emotional aftermath of one or another of what has been going on here, and I’m wondering -- do you think -- some of it has its place . . . and then go on to speak about something else, it seems like.
Johan: Well, really, I -- when I said that I think I was really trying to do something nonverbal maybe.
Daniel: If I were to say what I just felt and experienced in the last ten minutes it would be that I suddenly look through Hilary’s contribution in reading these suggestions. I realized that Hone, Jeff laid this stuff on us two years ago. And all of the sudden it’s kind of like a score box, and you go down through and say what has worked and what hasn’t. And the implication is that if one of these things hasn’t worked, if we have been aggressive or psychologically beating up on each other, which means, why, we can let things go, ignore each other, refuse to call each other on things for the sake of unity at all costs -- In other words, some of the things I was thinking is "how have I been weaker or shy or just have lacked nerve, or what things haven’t I said over the last two years that later on I thought ‘gee, I really should have said something’?" And perhaps Hilary’s introduction of this has thrown us back a sense we’ve had of where we’ve been and what we’ve struggled with. Maybe that’s why suddenly, Johan, you just sort of faded on yourself.
Johan: Yeah, I don’t know. There was a point to what I said, but I don’t know what it was.
Hilary: Yeah. But I think I said -- I used the word permanent
Johan: Well, oh, yeah.
Mark: Something just occurred to me about this business about at least what I feel is meant about the issues she defines. And it is this point of affection and mutual respect. The problem which I’ve been struggling with at various times is that -- at times, you know, I have seen a pattern going on and the effect of my bringing that to a person’s attention has been to cause an emotional upset. And I’m wondering whether that may have the effect of making the atmosphere around here not to be an atmosphere of respect. If I upset someone does it mean then that for that person there is not this atmosphere of affection and mutual respect, which is necessary to bring -- is this the problem, if that’s the case?
Hilary: Yeah. I think if it is done in the spirit of the Zen of ‘let us look at that’ then it would not accrue a negative feeling. If it is done and you’re being judged and uh -- telling the children to behave -- or controlling or pointing out or accusing you know or dominatory. You know, it depends on that spirit, I think.
Ricardo: And you -- And how does that spirit feel to you generally? Does it feel negative?
Hilary: I think that it’s better if we stay in the now and not go back to the past.
Ricardo: Well, the reason I want to return to the past in that context is that I feel like the elephant in the room here is some sense that this is maybe different for you than it is for me or for some of the rest of us. And I thought Mark’s comment just now was trying to get at how he might contribute to your feeling that way, and what he’s doing in what he believes to be a constructive way for dialogue. So we’re still trying to get at that issue.
Hilary: Anything Mark does is contributing.
{Laughter}
Mark: That’s interesting -- Mark has -- well, what is it --
Daniel: That’s the feeling I have is that your comment about your contribution was a hundred and eighty degrees -- was absolutely right but it was just completely turned, because I have said to you over the phone more than once you showed more guts more balls last night or last week, and you said this and this and this and it had to be said. I think you are in my mind Mark as one of the more consistent contributors to trying to get people to be accountable --
Ricardo: Yeah, and I would attribute that to Hilary as well
Daniel: Yes! And Hilary as well! Yes!
Mark: Well, thanks. No, the reason -- you understand the paradox here -- the possible conflict that such a contribution such a risky contribution in a sense -- if it upsets somebody and that person takes that in a certain way, then it could be negatively reinforcing to them.
Ricardo: But it’s still the responsibility of the group to present that if it’s put out in a way that it isn’t constructive, that it isn’t well-meaning, then the rest of the group is supposed to be accountable for that too. "Hey, that didn’t quite make it here."
Mark: Right, so then the question is, how could it possibly be that we don’t have this atmosphere of affection and mutual respect --
Ricardo: I agree.
Mark: Because if we don’t it means that we
Juanita: I think in order to have respect you need to be able to be hurt, be able to hurt each other. And I think that is what enables respect. That affection creates no conflicts or no conflict means "good," and I believe that I personally as a conflict avoider, need to learn how to be able to put something out that could potentially hurt someone in a climate that is respectful; there still is respect; or that I could be hurt by someone like in some sense I was just offended by your comment, but I wasn’t offended by you. And somehow there’s this two sides of the same coin to this issue of affection and respect. We need to be able to allow opportunities for hurt or conflict.
Hilary: I find it fascinating that I really didn’t even have that one in mind --
[Laughter]
Mark: Oh, you want to move.
Ricardo: You want to move on to the critical one.
Juanita: But what you really wanted to say!
Hilary: Is number one that that dialogue starts from a willingness to be tentative, you know. But I really wasn’t talking about hurting individually. I think it is up to the -- that is exactly the nature of dialogue -- it triggers and then we stay with it and walk with it ‘til we find where the dead end is.
Juanita: Which is what we’ve been doing with this issue. We’ve been walking with this issue, the one that you didn’t think you put out, but you did.
Hilary: I mean, I put it out, and that wasn’t the central issue I was just interested that people talk on that.
Mark: I wonder how tentative you’re being about that. The zealots intention is perhaps a little less tentative than the point of it. I mean, the way you put that. That’s what we’ve been doing. I mean . . .
Juanita: Yeah -- so, do this. Ask me again because I want to try to.
Mark: I’m not sure whether I’m making a serious point here, but perhaps there’s a serious point behind it somewhere.
Juanita: OK
Mark: Which, perhaps is behind what real point of Hilary’s objection to this other point of view, is that the -- if we’re really tentative about what we know, if the whole dialogue -- if everything is a question rather than --
Johan: An answer.
Mark: Rather than a statement about "oh, this is the way it is" then should that not reflect itself into an entirely different language. So that perhaps we should be speaking in a more questioning tone. The fact that we tend to put out what as if these things are -- perhaps that really does show something that is missing.
Hilary: And what if -- I think these all say the same thing. "When a reaction arises neither suppress nor defend it but suspend it in your mind and in the group, suspended in the groups mind, but keep it constantly available to look at it."
Ricardo: I’d like to try to present that notion. Earlier Johan raised this analogy of jazz, and we all went off in what was a kind of a conversational way. And then Mark it seemed to me got to a point with that where he wanted to use what was going on there in an inquiring way. And I’m wondering now if we are able to kind of return in a way that that tenant just suggests. That maybe that is in fact a dialogue -- it is maybe not what you wanted in the same inquiry way that you just suggested to the group. That you took that to some questioning place of greater merit or meaning for you than -- The reason I say that is I was very intrigued by the integration of our thinking about the jazz topic with the analogy, and I liked the flow there of what that was. And again what I’m trying to suggest is for me the disruption then was exactly what you just suggested, where you had a tendency to want to take this someplace different than where it was or more or --
Mark: Interesting that you’re perceiving this as a disruption.
Ricardo: No, I’m not perceiving it as a disruption, so much as a question -- my question is an answer to the question you just proposed -- is maybe what we’re all trying to do all the time is to remain in that more tentative state. And then are you in that tentative state if you’re taking it --
Faye: This is assuming that a tentative state is the thing. I would think it’s only one state of many.
Ricardo: Well, yeah it is -- It’s just the one that’s written here that we’re sort of addressing about being an ingredient here in how we would choose to be, and I think that --
Faye: Doesn’t that change with the moment?
Ricardo: I think it changes constantly, but I think what we experience happening is that it changes with the individual as opposed to the collective, as opposed to the group.
Faye: But that’s what makes the collective is the individuals.
Juanita: Is that a statement or a question or --
Faye: -- each one that makes the collective. I think the insistence on everything being a specific or the same or whatever is where the -- where error is creeping in.
Johan: Well, who is making the suggestion that everything be the same?
Faye: That’s what I’m picking up. That we all have to stay tentative and this and this kind of thing, and that’s a point and it’s a very good one --
Johan: Well, it’s the willingness to be tentative which is about what you -- there’s a paradox, it needs -- all of this, it’s all very slippery and it’s full of paradoxes.
Faye: One thing being willing to be tentative but you can’t continue to hover. There comes a point when you have to land.
Johan: Exactly, know what you’re saying. In other words, you -- and it’s a matter of being subtle with language, because I will admit that over the years I’ve done a lot of reading in stuff about Zen Buddhism, and one thing that you become sensitive to is that often, when there’s a statement made, it really means exactly the opposite of what is stated, or it means something that’s off in left field, that has nothing to do with the words, and a little bit of that spirit in dialogue, I think it might be helpful. In other words, maybe when I say something I mean the exact opposite of what I’m saying. Or you know, sometimes, not all of the time, but just some of the time.
Ned: Is it up to the perceivers to interpret when this is apropos.
Johan: Yes.
Ned: This is interesting because it’s not -- I don’t feel any responsibility for your reactions to what I say.
Johan: Exactly, right yeah -- there’s no -- I guess I’m pointing out -- you can react any way you please, I’m just pointing out that maybe if you take me seriously all the time, you’re being very inappropriate in your reactions.
Ned: Well, certainly humor has a major role to play in the whole dialogue setting, especially for the defensive reactions that can occur.
Hilary: I would just say I didn’t experience that as humor. I experienced that a paradigm of communication -- that if you comprehend the paradigm, then it was just plain communicating. It wasn’t humor
Mark: I feel like I have done things in that way in the past. I don’t do them anymore because I don’t feel like they have had a communicative effect in this context so there’s a question whether it’s appropriate -- it’s certainly appropriate to communicate in that way when you’re with someone who is --
Johan: Well, what I’m suggesting --
Mark: in a group like this --
Johan: Well, it’s not deliberate. I mean the point is it sounds like you made a decision to say something paradoxical or
Mark: No, no, it’s not that. It was just the frame of mind I was in at the time.
Johan: Yeah, well, I mean, what’s wrong with it. I mean, you were being genuine then --
Mark: Perhaps, but nevertheless as a matter of fact as a matter of observation, I have chosen to back away from that as a consequence of the effects which it had on the group. out of a sense of responsibility for --
Ricardo: Affect and respect.
Hilary: You can’t go -- I’m sorry, Johan, I just told Ned I wouldn’t correct you and I did. I’m sorry.
Ned: That’s fine.
Hilary: I’m sorry. You’re depriving the group if you sit on yourself from your whole being. And in a way the last comment here -- "dialogue is being together and seeing together in an unfolding relationship" -- speaks to the fact that one of the results of doing dialogue is that I come to move into the Zen paradigm if I wasn’t used to it by deeply listening, and being present to you. So by your cutting that out you deprive me of part of you and the world -- you know, we’re all in the world.
Ned: Ignorance is bliss though, Hilary. I mean, you wouldn’t know the difference.
Juanita: I’m kind of curious about where you guys are --
Jeff: Well, Thomas Grey never said that ignorance is bliss. He said that ‘where ignorance is bliss foolingry and folly will persist’.
Juanita: Where ignorance is bliss, what?
Jeff: He said "where ignorance is bliss foolingly and folly will persist Thomas Gray, you know --
Right.
He knows who it is.
Jeff: So that clichŽ is a classic distortion of a kind.
Jeff: Well, it just seems that we all can enter in at different points. If we play it back to where we were playing jazz, I could have entered in, you could have entered in -- So I think that we all play different roles, sometimes where you know we hold back. Sometimes we could in an internal manner respond differently to each perspective. Like I was listening to Mark, he said the word "all" when he began his statement, which is one of those unwielding, non-negotiable assumptions that we’re supposed to be paying attention to.
Ned: I believe he’s been put on the rack.
Jeff: Oh, no. I wasn’t talking about Mark, I’m just saying that I could have entered in at different points earlier on in the tape but there’s a whole group here.
Daniel: I think also what’s present to our group always and through each of us are the problems of our times, in the sense that one of the things that’s happening with learning now is that there is a reaction to the notion that self-image in the American educational system is supposed to be an A plus ultra. Johan was saying we’ve got to bring back what used to be called the jack with the stick -- I mean, in the nicest way -- that part of each of us that reaches out and gives us a little punishment so that you know you’re coming up against a real flesh and blood person. If the American educational system was being criticized as giving people a sort of fools paradise of Southern California, that self-image is great and you get "well, your opinion is just as good as my opinion" pretty soon the entire society is saying there’s not a cutting edge to things: we’re in value relativity and all this. The reason I mention these things -- it’s sounding like just I’ve been reading too many newspapers, or something -- is because I think these cultural issues are present to us as we go through our own therapy, so to speak. What I’m saying is one of the functions of dialogue is for each of us to define ourselves in terms of the problems of our age -- how we’ve joyfully gotten by them or how we’ve been stuck with them. So I’m just sort of changing the subject, in a way, to say that there’s other things present to us aside from ourselves; there are -- culture is hovering over ourselves.
Faye: Are we having Atavistic tendencies?.
Juanita: What?
Faye: Atavistic tendencies Uh-uh. Atavism is essentially coming from the distant past, settling on the order of cellular memory ethnic backgrounds even though you weren’t brought up in that culture, it’s built into your DNA and everything.
Ned: How do you spell that?
Daniel: It is spelt atavistic. It’s full of the primitive and gets, does it not, with Jung into these figures --
Johan: Yeah, the collective unconscious.
Daniel: Archetypes. Yeah, archetypes, like the Christ is an atomistic --
Juanita: Oh, Okay. I’m with you now.
Faye: So it’s also culture plus atomism. Plus.
Juanita: Plus ?
Faye: Plus your own experience.
Johan: And we’re sort of trapped in our culture, but -- which is a good point -- but --
Daniel: Oh Faye’s point is that we’re trapped in a transactional role that we see ourselves as the man on the white horse or the lady waiting to be rescued or whatever it is, and I’m not deliberately making fun of this because the atavistic figures are more serious than this kind of pop culture way I’m speaking of.
Hilary: I must be missing something here -- What I’m wondering is isn’t every moment in history influenced by my culture and my collective unconscious and so it’s almost like a cop out or something -- You know, that is the point of life -- is to see the self in the now, in the culture now -- we’ll be moved in our presence of the past. And that is what we’re here for.
Johan: We’re well wait -- Yeah, in a sense we’re here to shed the conventions of our culture.
Hilary: Right -- that is the subject.
Daniel: But we’re in this transcendental thing where the reason we’re put on earth is to rise above all this stuff, right. And that’s a terrible conceit, to where you get above the now.
{Laughter}
Faye: Well essentially to go through it is all that matters.
Juanita: To go through it and pardon me?
Faye: To go beyond it. To go through it and go beyond it.
Juanita: Huh . . . that’s a really interesting assumption I think.
Next: Appendix 1 -- Record of Oregon Dialogue Group (continued)
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Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti

other dialgue groups

2004-10-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

D. Experience in other Dialogue Groups
My intent in this section is to convey my participatory experience in the other dialogue groups, and for that purpose I must briefly mention some ongoing groups that have existed along the lines of Bohmian dialogue.
I was informed of dialogue meetings occurring on a sustained basis in California, Australia, Quebec, and most recently of a meeting that has been ongoing for three years in Amherst, Ma. The dialogue group in Lancaster, England (of which Cherith Adams writes in her master thesis "Who Am I ? A Study of the Impact of Long-term Participation in a Dialogue group in Members’ Belief in, or Sense of Individuality" (1995), addresses evidence of noticeable change in the self. I found her review of the psychological literature paralleled the psychological aspects of Bohmian dialogue. Regarding general responses to my queries of various groups, the problem common to all groups has been one of sustaining members. In his dissertation, Mario Cayer addresses the question of keeping dialogue alive, that the participants need to have an understanding about mindfulness. As I see it, mindfulness is be one of the beneficial results of persevering through the difficult phases of dialogue. Yet I find Cayer’s proposal (that of mindfulness) quite intriguing. Perhaps a consciously aware group would jell in a coherent manner, but as I recall, the value of any insight gained by the individual or group pertains to the prospect of reaching out to everyone. At this point, I do not see this happening without a large grant or other sponsorship, which well might jeopardize Bohm’s intent of beginning at a culture’s grass roots.
In England, Peter Garret has been working with a dialogue between prisoners and guards. He definitely has a captive audience. Addressing this project is beyond the scope of this report, but for those interested who are interested Garret’s address is listed in the bibliography.
In the spring of 1996 I began my internship in Hungary with The Club Of Budapest, founded by evolutionary and systems theorist Ervin Laszlo. Due to the Dalai Lama’s poor health, a scheduled conference was canceled and, at my request, I was released for ten days to participate in The Whole Question of Education Conference in Brockwood Park, England. I also attended two dialogue meetings in London. A year later I attended a conference in the English countryside concerning Bohm’s ideas, and was invited to participate in a dialogue meeting at the Quaker center near the street from Birkbeck College, University Of London.
Meeting One, London, 5 people
Discourse and dialogue fade in and out of each other like the conundrum of time and timelessness.
I mentioned the Socratic scholar Vlastos, who concerned himself with irony and mockery as a major part of the inquiry that occurred during ancient dialogues at the Acropolis and other places. One respondent mentioned that the dry sense of humor of the British could be construed as mockery. Throughout the meeting some people remained quiet and before we knew it nine o clock arrived and the meeting adjourned.
One example of a typical response was that "thinking and feeling are different aspects of the same coin."
We talked about many things, including the lack of emotion exhibited by the articulators (those who talk glibly), and people who feel that the non-verbal emotional response is closer to the spirit of dialogue. We met in a flat belonging to Felix Greene’s widow. (Greene wrote books about social concerns, including one I have read entitled The Enemy: What Every American Should Know about Imperialism..) The group had been meeting at this flat for three years. A man spoke about Sloss’s book on Krishnamurti’s private life. Someone remarked that Krishnamurti wore ninety dollar shoes. After the meeting I went with some of the dialogue participants for tea. Lila, a former art teacher at Brockwood, talked about her experience as a teacher, and she talked on the dialogue experience.
I felt much more at ease in the London group than in Eugene. Does my being at ease in the London group have to do with the difference of national character elucidated by Gregory Bateson and Filmer Northrop? If I remember correctly, the gist of Bateson’s study was that the British demanded a more socially oriented kind of participation which included a refined development of the art of conversation.
Meeting Two, London, 12 people
Mike High said the group was still talking "about" dialogue, but they were not actually engaging in one. It was interesting to observe the back-and-forth parleying between Don and Mike, two of the regular participants. One man asked me to speak. I said, "You’re putting me on the spot," Then I originated, "I know a way out of the impasse that this group is entrapped in." In retrospect it was a tactic on my part to relieve the tension of the moment. I really did not think that there was a simple way out of the apparent lack of coherence. Saral said that she had heard the tapes of Krishna’s statements as he was dying, and they indicated he went out in dismay. Mike mentioned that "he was Irish and liked to talk" and was carrying on because I was there. As was the case in every meeting I have participated in there were the usual phases of ambient noise, as well as what seems to be called silence that seems to phase in at the beginning, middle and the end of each meeting.
In this group it was interesting how people used what appeared to be journalistic skills to shift the content of the process of discourse when someone felt that the group had lingered long enough on a particular theme. When the group closed, one newcomer who hadn’t spoken made a very observant comment about what he saw going on, regarding as far as the point-counter point bandying among the participants.
One pattern I particularly noticed in this group was that several times when the group seemed to be stuck, one person would interject that the group had talked too long on a subject and it was time for us to move on. I said to myself, "Dialogue is an art form, and philosophers are artists in cry. Their tears are now."
Later, in an informal discussion, I found there was a sentiment among many participants that after three years the group needed to disband and regroup. Mark had told me the same thing in the personal interview I had with him just before I left the US. In Eugene he felt that everyone was too familiar and that the group as it was then composed would not go any further.
Meeting Three, June 11, 1997, approximately 18 people
We participated in what turned out to be a fascinating experience akin to a weaving in and out from discussion into dialogue and back
again. As usual, we began with this phenomena (for lack of a better word) of silence.
One woman said that she did not feel comfortable with the "we" word. For some reason she felt awful when people used this word. As you can imagine, this led to a parley on the various uses of "I," "you," "myself" "them," and "we." Someone vehemently said, "What is ‘I’ but an illusionary construct anyway?" I replied that Sir James Jeans defined science as "an earnest attempt to set in order the facts of experience in everyday living." I was told such was only one view of science, so I concurred. Someone talked about poetry, their role as an artist, the mode of composition, and the sensitivity that ensues. The talk was about William Heute’s speech on virtual reality -- a make-believe world. Many people felt comfortable with his approach when invoked as a heuristic device. (Gordon Pask, author of the article "A Conversational Theoretic Approach to Social Systems" in Sociocybernetics: An Actor-oriented Social Systems Approach (1978) & other books, defined heuristics as fuzzy logic).
E. Conclusion
My experiences in the dialogue groups described in this report varied considerably. Financial limitations as well as obligations of my graduate program influenced my involvement. Since I am by nature somewhat hermetic, I found that any consistent involvement in groups enhanced my development as a human being. One aspect of my changes occurred in that I developed listening skills which have profoundly affected my life. My experiences with community have revealed many aspects of the thought process and how it functions. The ambiguity which I often experienced was not an evasion of difficult challenges, but rather a kind of "dance at the edge" which moved me tantalizingly close to insights necessary for creativity. These dialogue communities illustrated for me one of David Bohm’s most moving statements, found his article "On Insight and its Significance for Science, Education, and Values" (1979):
Insight is an act, permeated by intense passion, that makes possible great clarity in the sense that it perceives and dissolves subtle but strong emotional, social, linguistic, and intellectual pressures tending to hold the mind in rigid grooves and fixed compartments, in which fundamental challenges are avoided. From this germ can unfold a further perception that includes new orders and forms of reason that are expressed in the medium of thought and language." (409)
Such insight is represented in a research paper entitled "A Systems Approach to Studies of Creativity and Consciousness" by Stanley Krippner and Allan Combs appearing in Systems Research and Behavioral Science (1998). They elaborate on the work of Mitroff and Kilman’s Methodological Approaches to the Social Sciences (1978). It is their contention that this approach (essentially an extension of Jungs’s view on personality types which he termed as intuition, feeling, sensation and feeling) is pertinent to studies of creative experience and human consciousness, and has implications for research in both fields. Krippner and Combs claim that
This approach is holistic and scientific, bringing creativity, consciousness studies and other complex phenomena into the main stream . . . . There are many scientific methods and many types of scientists. (90)
And quoting Senge et. al., "Mitrof and Lilman’s contribution, expanded here, has been to present in a systematic way a collaboration in what can be called a common loyalty to the truth. . ." (1994, 214).
Another example of the presence of different types of scientists is presented by J. D. Bernal in his book The Freedom of Necessity (1949). Bernal, who was a crystallographer, was a strong supporter of a socially responsible science. He was also instrumental, as the head of the Physics department at Birkbeck, in securing a job for David Bohm. Bernal proposed that the playwright George Bernard Shaw actually was a scientist. (e.g., Shaw’s imagination and rigor, which he represented in his plays, concerning the human predicament). Bernal also argued that Shaw’s skeptical inquiry, which he represented in his scathing social analysis of the social conventions of his time, was eventually responsible for the changing of these conventions.
Bohm was of the view that the best place to begin a dialogue experiment was at the grass roots. For those who are wondering if it is possible to launch such a group with little funding, I initiated this experiment on a shoestring with the spontaneous help of only a few people. I estimate my costs were approximately 400 dollars. Although there were no leaders, I must say in passing that the coordinators who took over calling around and making other necessary arrangements for the meeting place spent many hours addressing various assorted details, much more than the two hours of meetings every two weeks.
This study of psyches, where minds were engaged in communication through exploration into the systemic aspects of the undue use of thought (past participle), often revealed incoherence within and between their beings. It is also suggested how this process affected these selves, who -- by inquiring vis-a-vis insight, or proprioception (collective meditation) -- promised to lead to a coherent wholeness which respected the uniqueness of the individual’s role through the self reflective process of harmatia (fatal flaw) metanoia, and proprioception. I might add that these three terms share the common notion having to do with aim. What are they aiming at? Is the intent of these psyches to understand the whole? As Bohm pointed out in Unfolding Meaning (1985), the implication of the original meaning of metanoia (penance) meant a personal transformation without probable guilt. Harmatia (fatal flaw) originally meant "missing the mark", without the dual idea of right and wrong, and the consequential probable guilt that has fostered a travail of human suffering, contributing significantly to the fragmentation that prevails with humanity. Did this exploration of many minds cast in this bi-monthly dialogue setting contribute to at least a glimpse of unity? Did this probing of many minds "in the round" on the limitations of thought lead to the realization that unity is a multiplicity of views? Or that unity emanates from understanding through each individual’s transcendence, whatever it is?
In my view, it is too soon to definitively elaborate about the possibility of coherence in Bohmian dialogue. The common problem is one of bringing in sufficient numbers, and as I mentioned, Bohm suggested that the ideal is between 20-40 people. As I explained earlier, I suspect that 10-20 will be the norm unless there is a change in the present trend. Bohm had suggested 20-40 participants as the right number to create a micro-culture and to mimic a group mind. Indeed, if there is a trend towards an evolution of cooperation -- one which natural philosopher Jonas Salk alluded to in his work -- perhaps communications such as this essay will contribute towards encouraging more involvement.
With regards to a definition of consciousness, whose content is co-ordinating the procession of what ensues between the participants, no one seems to agree on what the term means. As far as I am concerned, Stanley Krippner’s definition is the closest to my own subjective experience. In his presentation "Towards a Science Of Consciousness," given at the 1998 Tucson III conference, Krippner defines consciousness as "a pattern of an organism’s perceptual, cognitive, and affective activities and/or experiences at any given moment in time" (5). I find inspiration in the latter part of his definition and I find there is significance to the definition that Bohm and Peat offer to in Science, Order and Creativity (1987) where consciousness was defined as "what everyone knew all together" (212). This definition is in accord with the experience of dialogue which I attempted to depict in this essay. As I stated above, scholars Ackoff, Schutz, Koestler and others use the model of "intersubjectivity," which could be construed to be a law of the whole inclusive of the variation of experience that ensues between realms of subjective, objective and beyond.
Dialogue groups in which I participated in Eugene, Ojai, (California); and London were not aiming for results or outcomes. As the proverb says, "the walnut ripens when it is ready." This experiment could be viewed as a heuristic device that is exploring and thereby learning (among other issues) the appropriate suitability for categories of new orders of thinking which ensue from an insight of undivided wholeness.
Ways to encourage more people to participate have been discussed by dialogue groups internationally. As I mentioned, Mario Cayer addresses this question in his dissertation and recently he received a grant to initiate the experiment "Insight, Meditation and Bohmian Dialogue." In a personal communication, Cayer told me he is assuming that approximately 25 people might participate in his experiment. Piet Hut, whom I heard speak at Tucson lll, is also doing a group meditation experiment that is similar to Cayer’s at Princeton’s Natural Science of Advanced Studies.
Many people whom I queried have assumed that dialogue is like a Quaker meeting, T-group training, deconstruction, Rodgerian encounter group, or therapy session. As I stated earlier, the experience does not exclude therapy or a definite form of spirituality, but these approaches are not the intent of dialogue. Inadvertently, individuals might find aspects of such methods that are meaningful, but the main aim of a Bohmian dialogue group is the exploration of "what takes place, as it comes up, in this circle" over a period of time.
Chris Argyris’s action research was mentioned by scholars Cayer, Tuling, and Adams, referred to earlier. Argyris has extended the inquiry of social psychologist Kurt Lewin, who developed a method of action research based on analysis, fact finding, evaluation, and a continual recursion of this process. As I see it, Bohmian dialogue groups have different boundaries than the methodology of action science, and there is a likely possibility that dialogue experiments could turn out to become one of the latest developments in the mathematical hermeneutic evolution of The Tree of Perennial Philosophy as illustrated in Figure 1.1, page 16 of mathematical physicist’s Ralph Abraham’s book Chaos, Gaia, Eros (1996 ).
Such a development would contribute to a resacrilization of science vis-a-vis wholeness. Is this indeterminate non-contingent approach of inquiry in Bohmian dialogue just a passing fancy? If not, what is there about Bohmian dialogue that needs further clarification? "My answer follows."
Theory often needs an incubation period in order to develop. These dialogue groups are not in any rush nor are they strongly swayed by results or outcomes. As Bohm has pointed out, evolution has a root meaning of unrolling. A nurturing approach to theoretical explorations exhibited by dialogue groups could eventually shed insight into an appropriate theory that in turn helps to clarify the limits of science and criteria such as Karl Popper’s notion of falsification which, it appears, is losing its strong hold in evolutionary epistemology.
In Wholeness and The Implicate Order (1981), Bohm states "to develop new insight into fragmentation and wholeness requires a creative work even more difficult than that needed to make fundamental new discoveries in science, or great and original works of art" (24). I see this approach to dialogue as an art. Although I consider my representation a first step into inquiries concerning the implications of consciousness and meaning, there were definite precedents set with this experience. The pattern of learning to work together revealed an enhanced listening of omniviews, which John Briggs and Frank McClusky articulate in their article "Ultimate Questioners The Search for ‘Omnivalent’ Meaning" in The Search For Meaning (1989). I suggest that further inquiry into this question of dialogue’s significance include delineations of suitable metaphors, analogies, similes etc. along the lines illustrated in William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguities (1953) and also mentioned by Briggs. Another aspect to dialogue as an art form is the questioning of assumptions through the medium of metaphysics, reminding us that in his last interview Bohm remarked that art and science would merge. Perhaps collaboration along lines of a new metaphysics like that of Skolimowski, Harman, Guba and others mentioned above and/or by collaborating with quantum theorists such as Hiley and colleagues Penrose, Hamerof et al. could lead to a new or improved science. My conjecture is that a dialogue format could be the catalyst which brings these various forms of art to a line of closure that contributes to such a science.
The philosopher Habermas, a pupil of Gadamer, says process is not an actual, realizable state of affairs, but an orientation for what is an ongoing effort. I would add that the aim of dialogue groups is an attentiveness to whatever comes up in the dialogue, and that includes the limitations of effort. My experience had a psychological dimension regarding consciousness, the subtle (spiritual) aspects of which revealed itself through the ongoing conversation between the individual and collective aspects of self. This unfolds in a way that glimpses the wholeness of life. David Bohm felt that each of us must discover for ourselves the meaning of wholeness, and I agree.
It appears that scientists have found ways to quantify complexity. I suggest that any researchers who initiate such measurements should be sensitive to dialogue’s potential, and let this deserving project develop. Speaking of complexity, Barbara Dossey in Holistic Nursing (1988) contends that the whole person is one who seeks the inward journey of understanding the complexity of life. I agree, and it seems that those who have partaken in dialogue have by definition given value, significance, and purpose to dialogue’s meaningfulness by asserting a trust in a greater whole. The ideals and aspirations of exploration are stated most appropriately by David Bohm in his book Wholeness and The Implicate Order (1980):
What I am proposing . . . is that man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e., his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole. Of course . . . our general world view is not the only factor that is important in this context. Attention must, indeed, be given to many other factors, such as emotions, physical activities, human relationships, social organizations, etc., but perhaps because we have at present no coherent world view, there is a widespread tendency to ignore the psychological and social importance of such questions altogether. My suggestion is that 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. (xi)
To sum up my experience with Bohmian dialogue as represented within the Oregon meetings and internationally, I believe there is a likely possibility that this experience in cultivating the art of talking can lead to a release from the undue use of thought into truly creative insights. In the Empire of Light: A History of Discovery in Science and Art (1997), Sidney Perkowitz writes:
Bohm and student Yakiv Aharonov derived a mathematical result about the behavior of electrons in magnetic fields. The result was thought to be unobservable, but like the wave function itself it has been experimentally detected showing that "unseen" quantum effects may have physical reality. (88)
My suspicion is that the proposal of David Bohm and his colleagues will emerge in a tangible way somewhat similar yet different to Sidney Perkowitz’s description.
F. End Notes
1. Definitions: "But I think the most fundamental things cannot be defined; we can unfold them, but we can’t define them," Bohm says in Unfolding Meaning: A Weekend of Dialogue with David Bohm, edited by Don Factor (1987. 104). [At the very beginning of this essay the sources of the definitions below are represented in the definition section by brackets.]
On Creativity . David Bohm. Ed. Lee Nichol (1998).
The Hidden Domain: Home of The Wave Function, Natures Creative Source. Norman Friedman (1997) Glossary (221-229).
On Dialogue . David Bohm. Ed. Lee Nichol (1996).
Dialogue -- A Proposal . David Bohm, Don Factor and Peter Garret (1991).
Transcript. David Bohm Seminars: Dec. 1989 . Friends of Dr. David Bohm: Index (160)
Science, Order, and Creativity . David Bohm and F. David Peat (1987).
Unfolding Meaning. David Bohm. Ed. Donald Factor (1985).
Wholeness and the Implicate Order . David Bohm. (1981).
2. Consciousness: See Science Order and Creativity, Bohm and Peat ( 1987. 212).
It is arguable that an emerging definition of consciousness be inclusive of the subjective (first person), cultural (second person) and collective/cosmic aspects (third person) meaning of consciousness. See "Conversations On Consciousness, Causation, and Evolution," Marilyn Schlitz in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 4.4, July 1998 : 84.
George Dyson in Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence (1997) suggests that the physician Alfred Smee’s definition of consciousness has not yet been improved upon: "Alfred Smee was among the first to close the gap between neurology and mind. He was an English physician . . . . The power to distinguish between a thought and reality is called Consciousness, he wrote in his Principles of the Human Mind Deduced from Physical Laws published in 1849" (46).
3.Proprioception -- In Charles Olson’s Additional Prose: A Bibliography on America Proprioception & Other Notes & Essays, ed. George F. Butterick, Olson defines proprioception as "sensibility within the organism by movement of its own tissues" (17). Cf. the definition of "proprioceptive" in Webster’s Collegiate. p. 797: "Activated by, pert. or designating stimuli produced within the organism by movement in its own tissues, as in muscle sense (Ed. notes, 85). CF. Interoceptive . . . Inspection judgment judicium, dotha" (86).
"Inspectio" and " judicium" are Descartes’ terms from his Principles of Philosophy, used in Whitehead, Process and Reality (Cambridge, 1929), esp. p. 67. Inspectio amounts to immediate intuition; judicum "the faculty of judgment or logical analysis. "Dotha" is Plato’s (word) for’opinion’ or -- as in ‘dogma’ -- ’a judgment’’ (Olson has apparently misread (these Greek words), which Whitehead points out is the same as the Cartesian judicium (Olson 86)
While investigating the notion of proprioception in the article "The Adaptive Radiation of Proprioceptors" by W. Wales, from Sensory Ecology: Review and Perspectives, ed. M. A.. Ali (1977), I found something suggestive about the question of light in Wales’ illustration of three chairs in a circle representing the senses of proprioception, phonoreception, and other forms of mechanoreception. The boundaries are grey areas, which are graphically displayed diagonally. Of Fig. 1. Wales writes: "There are no distinct boundaries between proprioception, phonoception and other forms of mechanoreception. These senses are thus separated by a gray area" (411).
4. Smee’s definition of reality: "When an image is produced by an action upon the external senses, the actions on the organs of sense concur with the actions in the brain; and the image is then a Reality." See note 2.
5. Smee’s definition of thought: "When an image occurs to the mind without a corresponding simultaneous action of the body, it is called a Thought." See note 2.
6. Bohm makes the point is that we do not grasp that which is but we are that which is: Truth is coherent (1989. 205).
7. Dr. Bohm was interested particularly in the question of a coherent (hanging together) whole. Wholeness in my view is indefinable.
8. In his book the Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) Rupert Sheldrake defines M-Fields:
Morphic field: A field within and around a morphic unit which organizes its characteristic structure and pattern of activity. Morphic fields underlie the form and behaviour of holons or morphic units at all levels of complexity. The term morphic field includes morphogenetic, behavioural, social, cultural, and mental fields. Morphic fields are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance from previous similar morphic units, which were under the influence of fields of the same kind. They consequently contain a kind of cumulative memory and tend to become increasingly habitual. (371)
9. Renee Weber and David Bohm talk about meaning as a form of being in chapter 30, "Meaning as Being in the implicate order philosophy of David Bohm: a conversation," of Quantum Implications: Essays in Honor of David Bohm, ed. Basil Hiley and F. David Peat.
Weber: Archibald Macleish defined poetry in that way. He says: ‘A poem should not mean but be.’ So the meaning is its being. To shift to another question: are time, history and development necessary for the evolution of form and consciousness? (447)
In the same source, chapter 29, "Reflectaphors: the (implicate) universe as a work of art," Briggs talks about poet Archibald MacLeish’s interpretation of metaphor:
Metaphor, however, it invites neither agreement nor disagreement, and despite its stipulative syntax, the sentence leaves the mind in a state more like that of hearing a question than understanding an assertion....................................................................... "Perhaps that is the metaphor’s point. Certainly it was MacLeish’s point. ‘A poem,’ he says at the end of Ars Poetica, ‘should not mean but be.’ (416)
(10) Emerson elaborates:
"outsideness." I -- Thou was popular in Europe in the 20’s. By the 1990’s seven decades of ban lifted and Russian scholars were free to investigate the fundamental sources for Bakhtin’s philosophy of "I-Thou-We." (225)
A. B. Demidov "The Foundations of a Philosophy of Communication and Dialogue," places Bakhtin’s thought in the context of I-Thou-We categories elaborated by Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, Semyon Frank and the Austrian -- American sociologist of intersubjectivity Alfred Schutz. (226-227)
Emerson continues in the chapter "The Russians Reclaim Bakhtin":
Bakhtin -- a consummate and not too badly compromised survivor understood consciousness in an entirely different way. To such binary paradigms he would have responded that the world is simply not set up as a battleground between system and chaos. . . . and that Bakhtin rejected both poles: the first a "Hegelian" (and later a semiotic or a Freudian) extreme that assumes "everything means something and is going somewhere " : the second, a relativist (and later poststructuralist) view that assumes "nothing can mean anything and thus we cannot go anywhere." As an alternative to that grim fantastical choice, Bakhtin believed that the world, as we are thrust into it, is a world of potential form. But the realization of form is never instantaneous, it is not an "uncovering of some preexistent thing." Patches of form arise as the result of intelligence, work, and moral choice; to survive, they require a nurturing environment. It would seem that discrediting the absurd dichotomy between "system or nothing" which eliminates duration and devalues individual effort, was the single major task of Bakhtin’s long life. (71)
One of the principles of Bohmian dialogue -- taking into account many views -- is pointed out by Emerson in her chapter "One year later: Bakhtin’s Inonauka."
People of Culture are more than mere scholars or activists; they must be able to hold focus, but at the same time hold in suspension, many incompatible and unresolvable truth principles. (275)
Hubert Hermans and Harry Kempen in their comprehensive inquiry into the implications of dialogue and meaning in The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement (1993) also discuss Bakhtin’s work. W. Barnett Pearce’s article "Achieving Dialogue with ‘the other’ in the Postmodern World" (1993) has an array of views on the dialogic perspective which also addresses the intrinsic value of Bakhtin’s work.
(11) The poet Charles Olson defines myth in his Poetry and Truth as "what is said of what is said." (47)
The teeter I mentioned is literally the muthologos, which is the Greek word itself. Not myth. I mean, like, I can’t use mythology without finding it muthologos. And I can tell you what’s in this whole thing. Again I -- its a number of years since I first stumbled on that. And it was in pursuing my own interests in the other Greek of myself, beside Hesoid, Herodotus, who was known because of his His-tory. I don’t know how immediately and how early this was his name -- the Logographer -- in contrast to Herodotus who was to the Greeks the Muthologos. I hope you hear the switch. It’s a most exciting switch, to my mind, because actually what you call Heodotus’ stories are known to the Greeks as logoi. May I get that to you? Actually logos, in my mind right now, logic or lllll [deliberate studder] is lll, is like s st story, and is like, only story. And that when you have subjects like pslychology and pslopology, you’re actually only having the stories of -- and history is, like, so. At this point, happily, we can say myththology is stories of myths-which is the word ‘mouth.’ Muthos is mouth. [sputters] And indeed logos is simply words in the mouth. And in fact I can even better even be stiffer an etymologist and tell you that if you run the thing right to the back of the pan and scraped off all the scrambled eggs and there’s still rust on it and you can’t wash it, you’ll find that what you have to say muthologos is, is "what is said of what is said." (47)
In Muthologies (1978) Olson writes: "The Earth, the Image of the World, History or City, and The Spirit of the World and do those four things under an epigraph which would be: that which exists through itself is what is called meaning . . . ." (64). After reading these poems he mentions that, "It’s almost like an exegesis of text, if you’ll excuse me. As I said, I have arrived at a point where I really have no more than to feed on myself . . . ." (66). He says if one would talk a Causal Mythology, the simplicity of the principle "that which exists through itself is what is called meaning" -- will be that one produces a one . . . . (66-67)
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2004-10-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

reflection on eugene dialogue meetings meeting 16 to 30

2004-10-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Meeting #16 September, 1994, 14 people
The dialogue began with a couple of people informally chatting about how one observes the movement of the moon. Mark wondered about the scientific explanation. No one really knew, but Mark said that he should!
Among the things we talked about were ESP, telepathy, and the general subject of psi. Mark said approximately 60 percent of scientists believed in it, while only 30 percent of psychologists believed in the likely possibility of psi phenomena.
Daniel talked about teaching students critical thinking in college composition, and the difficulty he was having. Ned talked about keeping the dialogue going in the fire. After this meeting a participant had voiced that at one point she had thought about punching Ned. In other words, she was aware of violence. I suggested that it was thought itself that created the illusion that her animosity was directed specifically toward Ned.
This situation described above could be one reason why there is so much small-group fraternizing (chatting) after the group adjourns. I made an attempt to civilize the back-scatter/collusion mode -- as it were -- by inviting whoever wanted to be my guest to nachos and drinks at the nearest available restaurant. It was interesting that in retrospect this move on my part was to no avail. The necessity for the group to have an impersonal fellowship became evident to me. Eugene is a small town, and it was not uncommon to meet other members of the dialogue group (including former participants) at some coffee shop or social event. At these informal get together the parties usually mulled over what had gone on in a previous meeting and often we commented on who was unaware, or the most eloquent, or the most boring.
Daniel spoke critically of Krishnamurti and Bohm saying that during their presentations together they were merely being "poetically polite" to each other. He mentioned that Krishnamurti did not use big words like many postmodernists. Then he suggested that we learn to use simpler vocabulary in daily living.
Lark talked several times about listening and talking into the center of the group in the "I" mode instead of we, and he articulated "I am one talking in circle." One new participant said that she disagreed with this.
Ned said that the process of dialogue clarified his thinking as time passed by. Yet Mark didn’t believe that the notions of "rational" and "irrational" were becoming clarified. I spoke about the invention of the cipher, as an insight into a natural principle introduced into Europe by Persians from Northern Africa. I recalled Buckminster Fuller’s view that the Romans kept everybody dumb through the use of Roman Numerals. One cow scratch Roman Numeral I, two cow scratch Roman Numeral II, etc. Then the cipher’s significant meaning was discussed: nothing was something, the empty column that goes back to the abacus. Sailors and nomads developed this tool for the practical activity of navigation. The group returned to the value of language as a tool and the ability to talk telepathically for long periods of time. Somebody acknowledged that they experienced this, but not for quite as long, and the group went back into dialoguing about consciousness. What did it mean? The group began a conversation about space, time, and experience.
It was quite difficult to use logic to understand these abstractions The number of potential and actual communiquŽs that are reverberating at one meeting is beyond my ken.
As I said before, another way that I could have looked at the question, "What is this consciousness that is ongoing with this experience of dialogue in this setting?" is to entertain Sheldrake’s argument that the M-fields from the past are tuning us into this circle; or that within the circle we do indeed tune into these fields. Morphic field notion is a speculative one. McDougal experimented with rats at Harvard in the 1920’s. Paavo Pylkannen, a student of Bohm’s, did a dissertation "Mind, Matter and Active Information: The Relevance of David Bohm’s Interpretation of Quantum Theory to Cognitive Science" (1993) which refers to Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation as the hypothesis of informational causation. Pylkannen’s dissertation argues that "Bohm’s view differs e. g. from that of Sheldrake in the sense that the quantum field is assumed to have a small energy field, whereas Sheldrake’s Morphic fields are not energetic" (101).
As we talked, the group went into a phase that seemed to be modulating. In dialogue it is a common phenomena to be able to foresee when a new topic or concept is emerging. Sometimes this phenomenon literally feels like waves of heat. Bard spoke about meditation of Tibetans in a cave, and then alluded to the "cave" of our group as multiple angles of perspective, and the proprioceptive vision of meaning that domains of thought misrepresent. Daniel said that "telepathy" occurs only in the absence of lying, and that statement was stated as "telepathic." Lark talked about the fact that it was acceptable for everyone to talk about the same topic, if we could only break out of our own self-created constructs.
I have opinions about some of the attributes of the individuals within our group: Daniel is remarkable at critical inquiry; Mark is the prober, and one of the most brilliant dialoguers I have met. Quinine who speaks rarely, is a good listener. Ned, who is an artist, has a propensity to conceptualize. Juanita draws issues out of people that enhances their meaningfulness; that explicates and opens the conversation for possibilities of further inquiry.
On one hand, dialogue aims for participants to be as unmediated as possible; yet the group wants concepts articulated clearly.
Following along the lines of trying to clearly articulate concepts, Faye pointed to Ned’s lack of coherence, especially the way he seemed to be thinking out "statements." She was asking him for clarification, and on many of the issues which the group exchanged, Faye contended that Ned made categorical assertions which were in reality more along the lines of neti -- neti (not this -- not that).
In a willy-nilly ambiguous manner the dynamics were facilitated by whomever had the best skills at guiding the phases of the process, especially when the meetings were getting too polarized.
To those who have not been involved in this process, I should underscore that one of the difficulties is tuning into and making coherent distinctions from the various cues that ensue from the ebb and flow of content and process. It is futile to describe the ebb while the group is in a knot that wavers analogously to a tangled tango of flotsam and jetsam. There is a tendency to avoid (gloss-over) the self-references of the other participant(s). These recursive movements in time are not measurable to ordinary thresholds of sensorial meaning, perceptionally constructed, or created reality. See Stafford Beer’s Beyond Dispute: Team Syntegrity (1994).
Bohm and Lee Nichol, in Conversations (1989 & 1992), discuss the value of free play in discourse, and that conscious use of words are used to roust out one’s perspectives. The importance in this parleying is to pay attention to the notion of the nonnegotiable assumption in the context of the conversation, which needs to be seen and acknowledged by oneself, until there is no sense of probable guilt imposed on the individual by the group.
The subtle texture of the domain of consciousness, whatever it is, includes the beyond. The beyond -- as represented in the unanimity of experience within the Mystical tradition, and especially in reference to objectivity -- has been clearly elaborated by Stace in Philosophy and Mysticism (1960). The beyond phenomena seems to arise when an attunement happens in conversations between participants. The conversations in these dialogue meetings have a nonverbal value that is on an equal basis with the verbal.
During the last go around a significant amount of the talking between participants took place on the subject of postmodernism and hermeneutic interpretations. Daniel asked if we could learn to speak in a simpler language, and he mentioned that Krishnamurti had the ability to communicate in that way.
An interesting incident happened at the last meeting. When Sally arrived, I gave her two handouts by Bohm For Truth Try Dialogue and Science and Spirituality: The Need for a Change in Culture. The latter was from one of Bohm’s last talks at a transpersonal psychology conference in Prague. She dropped them to the ground. I did not say anything, but it did cross my mind that she might be psychologically disturbed. A few weeks earlier she had approached me, and when she asked for coffee money, a friend helped her out. She seemed to be in a strange state. Who can judge such things?
Meeting #17 October, 1994, 13 people
When I began to participate in this dialogue group, I was examining Gadamer’s interpretation of Plato in Robert Sullivan’s Political Hermeneutics: The Life Of Early Gadamer (1989). It is Gadamer’s view that Plato was a realist, who "learned as he went" by the dialogue process.
Daniel started talking about his students and "Plato’s Allegory of the Cave." He said "the story says that humans are chained in the way they look at issues, and what appears to be real isn’t." Daniel was wondering if one could talk along those lines in this dialogue group. Faye started to talk about evolution and higher planes of awareness. This group assumed that the cave was in the dark. Hence when we see the light, it isn’t light. This was suggested to be an a example of the vicious circle that humanity is caught in. It seemed to me that we could kick the subtlety of this around forever. The variety of interpretations of this cave took us into questions like personal advancement, progress and evolution. One said that humans are supposed to be social, and Americans were not; we were laughing a lot more than I had witnessed in several previous meetings.
Johan talked about being a scientist, and later getting into the interpretation of Plato and seeing the value of it. Reiterating the statement I made above concerning Sullivan’s interpretation on the Early Life of Gadamer, I brought up the notion that Plato was a literary artist who saw philosophy as politics by other means, and learned as he went. Gadamer contends that Plato was by no means an idealist. Ned brought up Bohm’s contention that thought is illusionary. Mark spoke of our ideas about the allegory of the cave as coming from memory, and he said that humanity was but an historical conclusion. Alexandria said we should just stick with facts, not personal diatribes or abstractions. Chris, a musician, talked about the ecologist Gregory Bateson’s observation that sensation of difference comes from thresholds of novelty and regularity.
We went into the personal story mode. Someone had just returned from Thailand and said that he felt like a virus or an alien in another country. Daniel said that the credit card aspect was the key factor for why he felt that way. It was said by many that this group needed to get out of its own human centeredness, or anthropocentricism. Someone asked if cultural difference was significant, with regards to interpretations of personal boundaries.
This statement was glossed over; it seemed that glossing over people’s views at times was a necessary selective process that this group learned to do quite well. I assume that the group did this so to adapt to the limited time parameter of ninety minutes. It appeared to me that the redundancy of the themes would eventually lead to an airing of the glossed-over view at a later meeting.
The group as a whole kicked around the notion that words are what we need to use to roust out thought, which could lead to a coherent process that was similar to Arthur Koestler’s idea of the holon. This group also bandied about the notion of enfolding and unfolding in relationship to the micro and macro realm which the pre-Socratic philosophers and others along the millennia have speculated on; in some cases these ancient thinkers made accurate predictions. Returning to Plato’s analogy, someone said that our human world was just another cave, and somebody had just made it out of the cave. I brought up the notion that this group was not diverse, and Johan said that we were in contradistinction to Medieval France. The notion of words getting in the way and preventing us from seeing was heavily contested . . . . As this group phased into the next set of articulations, Lark talked about mathematicians working meticulously on abstract stuff, and that they got to the point and were able to "grok" reality. This idea of mathematicians having figured it all out was contested by others. Someone wanted to know how the ideal of the hologram could be of use; I said it was an oxymoron, and that Wittgenstein had put us into that mess with his notion that the function of a language is its use . . . . We were talking about this complicated idea of suspension; it seemed that one can have one’s own opinion, yet you hold it back a little to get the drift of what is happening. The group wanted to know where all this thinking came from; someone said books, memory, and the collective of humanity.
Ned talked about a white crow homunculus, and said he had learned a lot from other people; a non Christian view of Plato was aired and a view on the development of Christianity was mentioned. We conjectured that in the past people lived with awareness; and the word synergy as a Greek derivative was used as an example. Several people on the next go around wanted to know why, if someone wanted to dialogue, their assumptions would have to be examined. Although a little rocky at first, in the final analysis they seemed to concur that examining assumptions is a good thing.
Someone tried to pin down whether Faye was a scientist or a mystic, but she would not allow herself to be pigeonholed.
It was interesting to note that Faye consciously used the terms man and mankind without feeling that she was being offensive. She saw it as meaning collectively the same thing as humanity.
Juanita responded to Faye’s use of language, saying, "I am only giving you a hard time."
Meeting #18 October, 1994, 15 people
Quinine asked if we had learned anything about this elusive subject of thought, which Bohm, quoting J. Krishnamurti, said is like a snake around our neck: i. e., dangerous. Apparently the dangerous side of thought is not easily understood. Bohm’s elaboration is not seen so vividly. The group started to talk about creative imagination, and this idea was taken in with the notion of dialogue as a creative tool. Mark said something about interpretation, meditation, spontaneity, and the dynamics of science that seemed to be a similar belief system. Faye talked about Manly P. Hall’s Morse Code translations, and that somehow they related to the significance of the circle. Mark said this experience of dialogue was distinctly different from a salon. An Utne Review (1991) article on Salons had included David Bohm’s proposal on dialogue. To most of us, a salon seemed to be like a country club. Ned said that when he first came into the group he thought it was acceptable to say whatever was on his mind.
Johan asked about science and philosophy. He contended that the philosophers were talking in a specialized language, so it was rare when they talked about physics. We talked about pi (3.14 etc. ) and how it was a model to be replaced by an interpretive model. Johan mentioned Archibald Wheeler’s take on the participatory person that has been extended by the philosopher Henryk Skolimowski in The Participatory Mind: A New Theory Of Knowledge And Of The Universe.
Robbin, who had been away traveling for a while, implied that this experiment of dialogue reflected a representation towards the whole. The word tribe historically implied something that was exclusive of another tribe. He alluded to Marshall McCluhan’s Global Village.
The homogeneic aspect of traditional tribes made it quite clear that many attributes of living and survival were wrapped into the circle. Considering the alienated life many of us are living it is inspiring to touch down with a diverse bunch of people even if it is only briefly. When these meetings began, I was depressed that there wasn’t a diversity of people from different cultural backgrounds; but upon reflection such is tricky, because a significant number of people in the US and in Eugene are somewhat culturally interbred and diverse. Many others in the group felt the same way, that the dialogue participants were becoming quite familiar ( regarding the issue of an impersonal fellowship too cosy) with each other. For example, there were distinct differences that represented diversity regarding the issue of heterogeneity-vis-a-vis-homogeneity, as well as another issue concerning the different interpretations of mysticism and the rational.
Different members questioned the virtue of technology, and this questioning went on in the predictable point-counterpoint mode, which, as I remarked earlier, can be a necessary precursor for an opening towards multiplicity and beyond. One participant said there was no way out of it, humanity needed to use technology to deal with the mess we’ve made. I said that language was the first technology.
Daniel talked about his LSD experience. He likened his experience of dialogue to a cultural enactment. I was thinking of an Alaskan tribe who performed rituals to adapt to vitamin D deficiency due to a lack of sunlight in the North.
Meeting #19 November, 1994, 17 people
We started the evening with the issue of where we should meet as we seemed to now have a choice. After some discussion, I brought up the notion of a friend of mine mandating for a vote by secret ballot to eliminate the police department in a small town in New England; because the library funding had been cut in that town, my friend’s constituency almost won. Someone said I was "off the wall." Apparently I had misinterpreted a previous comment.
It is difficult to be as unmediated as possible in the articulation of one’s thoughts and feelings. Once the tone of the meeting had been set, it was difficult to enter the conversation and change the dialogue into another mode. At some of the meetings it seemed that there was a demand to inquire into a universal theme and find the commonalties and differences. The views of each participant kept the content forever varying. The dynamics of the process were facilitated by whomever had the best skills at guiding the phases, especially when the meetings were fragmenting.
We started to discuss the subject of thought and mentioned Bohm’s use of thought as referencing the past. Ned had talked about the flag waving, the wind waving, and the mind appreciating the mind waving. When we kicked that analogy around in relation to thought, someone with a very quiet voice suggested that we take the approach of "no thought." Mark said that this kind of talk was a belief, and henceforth the group bandied about distinctions between concept, reality, experience, and consciousness. The last statement along these lines was that reality was made empirically.
Faye argued for a new experience, the religious experience in a mystical domain. She seems to favor this point of view, and used terms like the Akashak records, straight knowledge, vigilance, etc. Louis, a linguist, who had once worked with Native American Indians, said that the perception and the concept sometimes approached similarity. Faye said that we were on the verge of breakthroughs several times. Someone else said that it was only an assumption that we were making breakthroughs. Ken and Mark had asked Faye to explain her definition of mind in more detail. They felt her terms were fuzzy at best. Louis defended Faye’s story of the new experience as being one of "no-thought."
As I have said, the acceptance of another’s view is an expansion of your circle, and the aim is to cultivate an inquiring form of acceptance, rather than a blind one. One needs to be wary of limitation as it unfolds through the process of holding our thoughts in "suspension."
Someone suggested that the flag wave/mind wave idea was an old Buddhist wise tale, but no one agreed. Carl brought up the idea of the relationship between desire and thought; one example he gave was that of the math whiz who works hard and then gets the "ah ah " experience. Our group was trying to find out tacit assumptions being discussed by various members. A person from Malaysia talked about thinking and the need to pay attention, that each person has their own container and point of view. The difficulty people had with understanding the varying definition of terms kept surfacing.
Ned admitted to being a provoker, and Juanita replied that if she had an emotional attitude it was difficult to listen without the coloration of dislike. Ned asked if there was anything he could do about this situation, and Juanita said no, that it was her problem, and she had to work on it.
Bill Bent (a colleague of mine) who attended a Buddhist dialogue group in Portland, Oregon for over a year, once remarked that Buddhists often ran into problems as follows: If he was not getting along with somebody, he would befriend this person to understand what it was about the person that produced difficulty, the idea being that the resistance one is experiencing with someone else is an internal conditioning. By dialoguing with this person it might be possible to gain insight into such conditioning. My observation is that this approach was eventually used by many participants.
Although the sides that participants adopted on various issues were complex, I represent a simplified example reduced to two different personalities: Daniel spoke about his seminar experiences at the University of Oregon, for example, and he occasionally harped about the rhetoric of science. A character profile of Faith is one where she quotes the mystical tradition, for example, Alice Bailey & Manly P. Hall. Faye espouses the virtues of this tradition, which is in contradistinction to Daniel, who is a self professed rationalist. But even with them, as with all of us, there comes a point where the merging of the "consciousness process," (whatever it is), with its varying aspects of immanence and transcendence, goes into "phase." Even if this phase is momentary, the consequences of the shift suggest the possibility of seeing another view.
Johan, a former physicist, spoke about the physicist Gell-Mann, who founded the Santa Fe Research Institute. Gell-Mann once remarked that superstition could be construed as mythology. Johan said that it was puzzling to use the symbols of language, for example, words like language, to claim reality as if it were the key to meaning. What did that word reality mean anyway?
Our group went back to the analogy of the flag, and the wave of mind and so on. We closed this meeting using the flag-wave-mind analogy as a way to appreciate the value of many perspectives.
Meeting #20 November, 1994, 15 people
This dialogue community started to talk about paranoia in the world, and I mentioned the ethnographic work of the anthropologist Malinowski, who studied a tribe in New Guinea. According to Malinowski paranoia was the cultural norm for this tribe. It has been said our American culture is a paranoid culture. We started talking about the concept of ratio and different definitions of it; our dialogue community agreed that we were learning to speak a new language, that the dialogue process was similar to learning a new language. At this meeting one newcomer wore sunglasses. He asked, (as Ken had at an earlier meeting, ) to talk sequentially around the circle. Many replied, "we’ve already been through that experience," and that they weren’t interested in repeating it. I can’t remember who said that there was not enough of a pause between speakers, but I said that one person’s millisecond might be someone else’s second. The conscious intent to talk on impulse, and its value in bringing out hidden assumptions was articulated. It was also pointed out that our culture obviously is not oriented to the cadence of -- let’s say -- a Native American Indian tribe.
I introduced an article from Dialogue Newsletter edited by Joe Zorski where a group had lapsed into two hours silence. We phased into another area of conversation: proprioception (self awareness) as a sense of thought watching itself. Daniel had spoken about his experiences as a teacher, and about Bohm’s notion of bringing ratio into balance with imagination. He used Coleridge’s interpretation of imagination, and
conjectured that Bohm was using a deconstruction to get us to an appreciation of this meshing which often occurs at the dialogues. I talked about autopoiesis (self-making) as a model (proposed by various scientists) to give insight into the meaningfulness of relationships. Maturana and Valera called this relationship structural coupling. I construed autopoiesis to be similar to the implication of the meeting between the eastern and the western phases of humanity which is discussed by Filmer Northrop in The Meeting Of East and West .
In Bohm’s view, the proprioception of the body and the mind manifest as subtle aspects of one reality, and in an undivided universe the individual is related to the social cultural and cosmic dimension. The meaning of an undivided universe, whatever it may be, is beyond a solipsistic definition of the individual. In the context of the group’s articulations, meanings for such terms as frustration, ambiguity, and non-linearity, or the seemingly lack of an orderly procession of similar differences and different similarities are in fact, orders of succession, which the Bohmian dialogue addresses, while probing to understand order; this process includes the use of rationality and the inferential. In short, Bohm viewed chaos (as exhibited in Bohmian dialogue) as a form of order. In her book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (1993), Mae -- Wan Ho, a colleague of theoretical biologist Brian Goodwin, writes about the implications of quantum coherence at the global and local levels in relation to the subject of wholeness. Her research suggests that maximum global coherence and local freedom is moving at the edge of uncertainty, and that nature is coherent in this way.
Bard talked about a "zombie state," the coup de grace that has taken over the world. I brought up the Noosphere as a web of connections that possibly supersedes the fragmentary mis/dis-information campaign of the public media. The public media glaringly misuse language, and consequently their knowledge is predominately without meaning. The Noosphere analogy is beyond knowledge, beyond world, a wisdom. It was acknowledged that human beings are not engaging in feedback with each other, they are conversing. Faye reiterated the notion of dialogue as shared meaning between people. I had been reading Composed in America and was wondering why John Cage found so significant the need to allow for space between people. His view was somewhat similar to Wittgenstein’s: what cannot be said is passed over in silence.
The inherent nature of the dialogue process is to be frustrated, in doubt, and ambiguous about nearly every issue. Many inquirers into Bohm’s work have stated that Keat’s approach of Negative Culpability is similar to David Bohm’s view of living with uncertainty.
For example, the experience of Bohmian dialogue is supposed to lead into an insight on right living, or clearly thinking. From such insight a self-correctional process should ensue, but the question remains as to whether any of the Bohmian dialogue groups have met that promise . . . . Listening to a variety of views was difficult for many. Even if this dialogue group did limit each person’s time, we would still have work through the same process. There would still be disagreement and misunderstanding from the multitude of interpretations.
Someone uttered the semanticist Alfred Korzybski’s statement that the "the map is not the territory, and whatever we say it is, it isn’t. It is always that, and so much more."
Meeting #21 December, 1994, 12 people
Different members started the evening by discussing the internet in general, and the experience of dialogue on the internet. I have engaged in a dialogue by e-mail and, in brief, it is an entirely different experience than meeting personally while sitting in a circle. Daniel said that dialogue was subversive. It is a difficult notion for most people to "grok" that there is no aim or set purpose to this experience, that it is merely a space to share one’s view. We began to talk about myth as making meaning in life. One person kept going back to Bohm and his analogy of proprioception and the limits of thought. Ned talked about "many voices and many interpretations," and the notion of the time that it took for each person to process what we believed was going on. He brought up the notion of art as aspiration, and I said art is an affirmation of life.
Bohm felt that at this junction of humanity, the social and cultural dimensions were the most significant areas of concern. Daniel pointed out that there were many interpretations of reality, and many kinds of stories. Alexandria left early; her only contribution was the statement that the internet was one of the power structure’s strategies for control and domination.
Daniel then talked about Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed & other books. I talked about one of his students, Johnathan Kozol, who had written Death at an Early Age, Illiterate in America, and Rachel and her Children. Kozol said he that he wrote these books in order to stimulate social action, but instead he got awards.
This falls in line with the contention of repressive tolerance proposed by Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse. As I understand Marcuse’s meaning, whatever is subversive to the existing power structure is neutralized by being turned into a commodity.
Bakhtin cited above, elaborated on the "Dialogic Imagination;" and Buber’s work on the "I and Thou" has a similar aim of the receptivity to the moment. I find it curious that in Pedagogy of Praxis (1996) Gadotti (a pupil of Freire) keeps Buber at arm’s length. Bohm had been hopeful that this dialogue proposal would begin at the grass roots level. I believe that Freire’s work does exemplify a grass roots approach. Jameson, a postmodernist theorist (introduced to me by Daniel) contends that there is a false play of consciousness that abounds in humanity. This is somewhat similar to Bohm’s view, yet different, since Bohm does not divide mind from matter per se. For those interested in further inquiry, see his proposal in "Soma-Significant/Significant-Soma," a chapter in Unfolding Meaning (1985).
I received an E-mail from Don Factor about his view of praxis ("learning as we go") in contradistinction to Gadotti’s view of praxis. It is like work experience. Praxis (action) is a way that we learn in this dialogue experience. The participants parley and play with various issues. In his book Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991), Socratic scholar Gregory Vlastos says that mockery was an important aspect of Greek Dialogue. The Greeks had developed irony in a way that contributed to creative insight. One of the main aims for this dialogue experiment is to see if we can touch into the creative realm at the individual, social, cultural, and cosmological human dimensions. Sometimes I sensed multi-facilitated skills developing. Someone would keep the flow of the discourse in a relatively harmonious track, and yet one would beg to differ, and politely and succinctly parley with the other(s). Most of the dialogue community seemed to have picked up the skill of handling limited time in a very artful way.
I used the term solution, in response to a problematic issue and Ned said there was no one single solution.
For some reason this led me to think of Charles Olson’s Muthologies (1978), as well as his Poetry and Truth: The Beloit Lectures and Poems (1971) wherein he defines myth as "what is said of what is said" (47). (11)
This etymological distinction gives me the sense of recursive conversation that has an on going self-corrective process within the context of the social cultural human dimension.
Daniel talked about a seminar he attended on ecological literature which included the brightest people he had seen in a long time, all with intent to earn a living in this world. Howard Reingold, a former editor of The Whole Earth Review, had been in Eugene talking about virtual communities. He used the analogy of holographic imageries rendering illusory events to appear real. The limits and dangers of technology were discussed and I mentioned some of the of the neo-luddite’s views.
In Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Bluff, (1990) there is an elaboration about the existing computer hype. Ellul’s philosophical perspective is an interesting counterpoint to Howard Reingolds’s proposal regarding the value of virtual communities.
Ned started taking about the limits of design, using the outdatedness of the toilet as an example. He believes that the whole world is in agony, and admitted that he was angry. Daniel said that he was touching upon Kant’s moral imperative; Kant’s philosophy was discussed by the group.
As usual, the beginning moves slowly with an interval of no talking, almost as if people were feeling out each other’s thought patterns. It is difficult to discern the exact meaning or logic of such "processing;" it seems as if an ineffable resonance emerges or emanates to lead the conversations. Sometimes beginnings have been awkward, but other times a preordained set of meanings seemed to be present for no other reason than to be probed. Midway through the dialogue, this group seemed to notice a pause as if consciousness itself was directing the event. On the whole, we seemed to mesh together very well. Our community seemed to feed off each other almost like the Portuguese man of war (coral life). This analogy of an ecological community is similar to Frank Barron’s view explained in his book No Rootless Flower (1995).
Meeting #22 December, 12 people
Ned began questioning whether there was any hope that dialogue will have value out in the real world. He said that it seems that humanity is doomed. Robin said that each person would take this micro-culture experience (which mirrored many of the issues in the real world) out into the real world, to be addressed in their own way. Juanita talked about the scientist Varela, who had recently lectured about the notion that awareness first appears in the body. I am familiar with Varela. Mark talked about his interpretations the meaning of dialogue and why he continued attending. Many said that they did not understand what was going on, and they continued to attend for this very reason.
Daniel had much to say about Kant the philosopher. He spoke about the concept of being, nothing, and becoming. Juanita responded to his very intellectual comments, by asking what he meant. He said that he was talking about via negativa ( a non-dualistic approach of inquiry). A new participant said that she had read Depak Chopra, a former supporter of Maharishi Transcendental Meditation, and that Chopra helped her to solve problems. Daniel responded that he had a fear of meditation; later he was cross-examined and he clarified what he meant: he traveled with continual trepidation, of being fooled by fallacious perspectives; that he didn’t want to do it wrong, -- politics, relationship or anything else. Juanita continued to question him. Ned said the process of dialogue was about consciousness, not problems solving per se, but "problems as process". This dialogue community again proceeded in multiple tunings. Ned said that it was impossible to listen and talk out a thought . . . .
Mark, who is studying cognitive science at the University of Oregon, made a few remarks about the implicate order and the explicate order, and Bohm’s primary model regarding ink dye in glycerin. (See Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order.) When the cylinder is run forward the dye is imperceptible; but when reversed the ink becomes visible as individual strands). Each person responded with varying interpretations. Juanita claimed that her acuity was in seeing patterns in people’s relationships based on their communications in the group. Mark responded warily about the danger of making an issue of pattern recognition. I suspect he was alluding to the idea that wisdom is beyond definition. Daniel continued by saying that he was leery about so-called meditation. He asserted that he never meditated. Somehow this led into a discussion on Protestant work ethic. On such issues as meditation perhaps each individual must pay homage to their own conscience. Someone remarked that this group listened with formulations in mind. Johan, (who brought up Wittgenstein’s views that the function of language is to "share something useful") observed that what can be talked about is often passed over in silence. I said that the same process went on in the Ojai seminars. The dialogue between participants wove in and out of varying conversations . . . . I asked, "How do we know that the enactment of body is distinct from mind?" Johan said that he didn’t care; he had already lived most of his life, and getting it right was no longer such a high priority . . . . Ned responded that as a consequence of this experience he was now more socially involved than previously.
It has become apparent to me that the private thoughts I have about dialogue are being transformed simply by being in the circle. The meetings are at the most two-and-a-half hours, yet it is interesting to note that there is transcendence, for a while anyway, from ordinary daily living. Maybe this explains why so often people are reluctant to want to leave, a reaction I sometimes call the "wrapped-up-in-tangle-of-the-tango-of-the muddle-of-the-mouths". Yet, in this micro-culture it is clear that the flow of variation in the discourse between people is not that much different from the daily grind of living.
Robbin claimed that the essence of the dialogue experience is having no expectations. We talked about the mystery of what is happening in our group, (by mystery I mean ambiguity).
In this community I often talk as if I don’t really know what I am saying; my words come out metaphorically. The literary critic I. A. Richards, in Complementaries: Uncollected Essays (1976), said that metaphor is the use of words to describe events that cannot be put in words.
Someone spoke about binary logic, mentioning that artificial intelligence computers can write poetry. I said they can do it, but not with the understanding which comes from weathering the thaw of frozen experience rendered human by the feelings and pain, a necessary phase in the cycle of human experience. It was conjectured that a small number of people could influence the world. David Bohm once referred to a biblical saying that ten good people could change the world.
Robbin asked, "Why do we express our own thoughts and limits?" As he was thinking he also seemed to be probing; and it seemed almost as if he was under the influence of the muse. He said, "Do we get anything from this dialogue experience?" One is supposed to be observing assumptions, people's references, how they vary . . .
Our next meeting occurred on a holiday. It was an informal get together at a cafe and I did not count it as a formal meeting.
Meeting #23 January, 1995 15 people
Daniel began talking about the distinction in literature between modern and postmodern, explaining that 1965 was the dotted imaginary line (i.e., the transition between these two phases). We were talking about synthesis, abyss, and boundaries. Out of the blue Ken asked if we could turn off the lights. I said that didn’t interest me. Later, I remarked that ergonomics is a factoring of variables in human’s environmental thresholds, a satisfying of everyone’s needs.
We took a vote about whether or not to use the lights in the room. Six people were in favor of lights; nine voted no. Nevertheless, our eyes adjusted and our conversation continued. It was indeed unfortunate that we had to decide such a matter by voting. A participant uttered in despair "Perhaps we might someday sufficiently evolve as a group to have a consensus from awareness." I said consensus wasn’t our intent. Faye said we had agreed upon this experiment, as stated in the proposal, from the beginning. What was happening? Regarding the voting, I suspect that voting is the most uncreative action that can be occur in a dialogue. I was reading into this issue something deeper than meets the eye, yet what it was I didn’t have a clue. I suspect it was along the lines of a necessary ordering process, which I discuss below.
Quite often after a meeting the gossip, which backscatters between participants, is vibrantly antagonistic to the adversarial other. As the process of dialogue unfolds, the subject matter moves into another set of conversations among the participants who are often engaged in their own kind of tangles. Besides the intention to explore thought and its meaning, there is a synergetic development that affects the larger community, which ensues from the open ended facilitation that occurs in Bohmian dialogues. The difficult yet emerging process of renouncing the dominator/leader (which appears to be universal in the dialogue groups I surveyed) in each of us makes it possible for organic growth that is accomplished by the participants’ praxis. Bohm, who assumed that there was an orderly process in life, referred often to Michael Polanyi’s work of the tacit dimension. Polanyi’s work is placed in the context of other philosophers of consciousness by Eugene Webb in Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Riceour, Girard, Kierkegaard (1988). Perhaps Lincoln and Guba’s Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) will result in renewed interest in Michael Polanyi’s work.
I suggested that we drop the atmospheric talk and embark upon another conversation. We had been talking about integrated culture in Southeast Asia. Ken said there was a common cultural thread, and then he went into the hyphenation of scientific disciplines. Faye had talked about the current trend towards synthesis. At any rate, the three new people spoke about the group’s decision to turn out the lights. One of the newcomers said that she had problems with florescent lights.
Bard spoke about Buddha and meditation. Bard and Faye got into a rap about how quickly the Tibetans regrouped after China forced them to move to India. I brought up the Cherokee regrouping in Oklahoma -- The Trail of Tears -- and someone mentioned that the quarrels between the Arabs and the Jews as well as events in Bosnia were regional issues, which didn’t seem to affect us.
In what appeared to be an off-the-wall manner Ned grabbed Unfolding Meaning and started reading about Moses’ statement concerning the notion of the limited and the unlimited. He seemed to be trying to tell the group that thought is unlimited. This kind of experience would happen often in our group setting; with people doing seemingly
off-the-wall things to clarify the issue of what was "Bohmian" about dialogue.
As we started to wind down, there were the usual intervals of silence (that appear to be a summing up) which lead into the next set of articulations. As we closed, I said to the community "everyone is different." Ken said that thought wasn’t the issue; it was our actions that counted.
I reminded myself that every content has a form, and each form has several representations that are presented by the performer’s articulation. There seem to be a myriad of ways that anyone can respond to each statement. I felt anxious at times, with a pain that was mindful. The rationale of the group’s mandate to turn off the lights was still a puzzle to me.
I mentioned Bohm’s reference to the hunting and gathering tribes, who knew what to do when they were talking, who knew how much to say of what, when, why, etc.. Someone said Bohm had become a hero. I stated that this process of dialogue is self-corrective, and I was reminded of musician Pete Seeger’s statement that the cult of the folk hero runs through all threads of our American culture.
In 1992, the participants of the "Dialogue and the Implicate Order Seminar" at Schumacher college performed a play that satirized Bohm’s alleged charisma. David Garret, an artist, designed a poster handout for the performers that characterized Bohm with his arms over his head suggesting a meditative posture. In the play the group performed a parody of Bohm’s idolization by chanting repetitively "Bohm-Om". . . . Most people who have met David Bohm would assert that in his inquiry into ideas he was unassuming and low key. The Philosopher Renee Weber says that David Bohm represents the good component of Plato’s trilogy: truth, beauty, and the good. For another interpretation of Bohm’s view on the good life I recommend Ib Ravin’s dissertation "Implicate Order and The Good Life: Applying David Bohm’s Ontology In Human World" (1989).
Surprisingly many people in our group assumed that several people were dialoguing the way Bohm recommended, with no leader, agenda, or facilitator. Although I stated that I didn’t know the exact numbers, my suspicion is that a very small number are doing "Bohmian" dialogue. Mario Cayer, who interviewed dialoguers about this issue, told me that sixty percent stop coming after six months and the groups are very small in numbers. In a February 1998 telephone conversation, Cayer reported that in Quebec approximately ten people have been meeting for six years. In the Oregon group it appears that the wholeness or coherence which Bohm alludes to has manifested itself only briefly in the intervals of silence, and only on occasion while the group was talking. Of course this phenomenon is immeasurable, and I suspect that many participants have a similar realization, but they immediately lapse into the ordinary.
Meeting #24 January, 1995, 12 people
This community began its usual discursive and abstract discourse with the aim of teasing out some understanding between each other. Juanita asked what David Bohm meant when he said that thought is limited. Faye responded by talking about "straight" knowledge, the unknown, and the mystical. Johan said he didn’t feel comfortable with that word mystical.. Ken questioned Faye, asking if she knew "for sure" about straight knowledge. He talked about waking in the middle of the night quite convinced that he had this experience, and subsequently he turned out to be mistaken. Ned brought up the dwarf in the homunculus. Mark said that an important aspect of this inquiry is that meaning arises unknowingly. Daniel said that language, poetry, and dialogue is a flavor, suggesting there was a Marxist angle to this dialogue and that Bohm had been influenced by Hegel. I mentioned the For Truth Try Dialogue article where Bohm and his colleagues indicated that shared meaning has to encompass everyone. I said that such a process seems to be a tall order.
Bard talked about his "Buddha experience," the wars, the O. J. Simpson trial, the local panhandling ordinance, and the knocking down of inexpensive student housing. After a while someone turned on the light, and I said that I felt our lighting situation is symptomatic of something deeper. Ironically, the same person who had turned the light off turned it back on. During the last two meetings, sensitivity to the room lights has been a recurring issue.
Ken and Ned became verbally combative with each other, and it seemed that Ned was seeking a coherent way to approach our inquiry. The notion of suspension of views was brought up frequently. Faye said that it is a mix-match; sometimes there is cohesion and agreement, but often there is no agreement. She talked about the different terms people have and the various meanings that they give to each.
Typically there was a period of stillness where "consciousness" -- whatever it may be -- wanted to process events, and tell us where to go next. It seemed that the group as a whole did not want to delve further into issues until some previously hidden or glossed over issue was raised and put forth in the center of the circle, as it were, and dealt with. It seemed that this dialogue community occasionally moved into interesting meaning, yet one couldn’t say for sure.
We lapsed into a silence and I suggested that it was time to break up and go for tea or something.
Several times I tried to bring up the rationale of Yalom’s experience with group psychotherapy and Rossi’s research on ultradian rhythms regarding ninety minute limits, but the group as a whole seemed to want to stay the entire time allotted by our meeting arrangements.
Meeting #25 February, 1995, 10 people
Ken began with the topic of fear and meditation, but it seemed that the group strayed and never returned to his original statement. Each person said hello to a new guest who after seeing an ad for this meeting was curious enough to come. As discussed below, the events that took place at this particular meeting were quite intense.
When there are fewer participants, it is easier to observe the tendency of people to collude. If participants are using another as a scapegoat, this tendency appears more pronounced in a smaller dialogue group.
There was a rift between Ned and Ken, who refused to listen to each other. Ken said that Ned wouldn’t listen. They have both been in the group for a long time. Juanita spoke about her five-day experience in a dialogue-oriented event, her difficulties at this meeting, and how she was finally able to take it in stride. Mark talked about his inner dialogue when listening to everyone speaking; Bard talked about Buddhism and about the meaninglessness and lack of community that he experienced in Eugene. The new women asked a lot of questions, while Faye talked about her process of vigilance and progressing through thought to actual awareness.
Ned and Ken argued about what is real and what is ideal. Ned wanted us to be real. There was much conflict in this Dialogue meeting. Someone said that dialogue is a "conflicting inquiry," but I wondered whether this inquiry includes the notion that we can’t even agree on terms. For example, the term "consciousness" was bandied about; someone kept using the term "expanded consciousness," a term I had not heard in a long time. The word attention was used; then another participant talked about the difference between awareness and coherence. Johan brought up the notions of inquiry, curiosity, and what the group was thinking. It was interesting to me that Ken accused Ned of being unethical, and yet it could be construed that from the outset, Ken was pushing his own agenda as well. Ken picked a topic without asking anyone what they wanted to talk about . . . . It was due to his prompting that we introduced ourselves to the newcomer; this gesture could be interpreted as good manners, or merely being meddlesome. Ken went right to Ned’s jugular, so to speak, saying that he was the worst, and that he was incapable of listening to anyone. Then Juanita, who is a natural born facilitator, again brought up the notion of inquiry and curiosity about the rules. Reflecting on what to say about Ken’s desultory remarks, I quoted Tara Singh’s statement: "Nothing that is real can be threatened." I explained this as a statement from A Course in Miracles. The title of one of Barbara Marx Hubbard’s books, Our Crisis is a Birth is another way to express this idea.
In retrospect, I was implying that the difficulty between Ken and Ned could be an opportunity for them and the group to go deeper towards developing a mutual understanding. After this meeting, Ken never returned.
Overall, this meeting was quite odd; there were many things happening. Bard said that he came for a social life, and then suddenly someone threw into the group the notion that humans and dolphins were originally the same species. The notion of humans and dolphins as originally being the same was thrown out into the group.
I see the tendency of the smaller group colluding to avoid whatever issues appear that suggest avoidance! This process reveals a lack of clarity by people who are assuming they are indeed being clear. At the same time, participants try to go through their confusions to arrive at clarity, although there does not seem to be a way to do it. It is all "flotsam and jetsam," or so it appears.
In his quarrel with Ken, Ned’s final statement was an idiomatic riddle that suggested that Ken was at fault. His statement was quite poetic.
Meeting #26 February, 1995, 9 people
We were bounced from our regular meeting place because of a high school debate conference, but we worked out an alternative. Someone started talking about Juanita, and Mark said we should desist unless she was present. It was ironic to me that later in the dialogue Mark and Faye kept talking about Ned as if he were a culprit. Statements were made along the lines of, "I don’t think he really knows what he is talking about." Lark, who had not attended the previous two meetings, began speaking about the trend towards fundamentalism. He indicated that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is more acute in Europe than in the US. I talked about characteristics of the mystic as stated by William James in The Variety of Religious Experience. Lark said that the mystical experience is ineffable, it comes unbidden, it is transient, and one’s life is changed forever.
For a thorough view of Mysticism see Stace’s Philosophy and Mysticism (1960).
Mark said that Lark’s remarks didn’t tell him anything. Lark spoke about his experiences with the Unitarian church, his ecstatic experiences, and writing about meaning and being. Mark said, "you didn’t stay there long." I paid homage to author Gertrude Stein, whose writings were woven with craft and artistry even though she used
a small pallet of words.
Daniel had spoken earlier about his experiences as a graduate teaching fellow when he had the opportunity to teach about Bohm’s philosophy. He mentioned handing out to his students the William Keepin article about David Bohm in Revision: A Journal of Change and Consciousness. Ned spoke about our culture and the fact that not much had changed, while Faye argued that things were changing extremely fast. It seems ironic to me that people critical of other’s limits of expression also have their own limits--which in many respects parallel the ones that they are critical of. Each person has difficulty seeing his or her own nonnegotiable assumptions. Bard’s opinion on the Buddhist view of the self confused a few people; then he apologized for his lack of scholarship.
For an academic view on Buddhist scholarship see Steven Laycock’s Mind As Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind: Buddhist Reflections on Western Phenomenology (1994).
It seemed Bard was talking about the extreme of the self and no-self, as well as the Buddhist concept of the middle way. I asked why Meister Eckhart was considered so highly and there was no response! Lark talked about "units of subject and object," the old "observer and the observed" issue that physics has been kicking around since Descartes, (but especially during the last seventy years). Bard had read Nietzche when he was nineteen, and said that Nietzche had quite an ego. Someone talked about Krishnamurti’s response to a question (asked by a writer) on the subject of earning a living as a writer. Krishnamurti replied that it is not wise to earn a living by writing, but that one learns how to survive when sincerely attempting the task.
I suppose the implication of Krishnamurti’s response was that one must do what they love, regardless of consequences.
Meeting #27 March, 1995, 8 people
The meeting began with Daniel talking about meaning and metaphor. He was taking a university class which dealt with a cognitive science approach to metaphor, and he felt his peers would see Bohm’s experiment as not rigorous enough. Our Dialogue group would be seen by these people as a "lightweight" operation. There could be a principle of the whole that manifests itself at these meetings because our community seems to illuminate all the dark corners, so to speak -- all the glossed-over areas of our communication that we are missing. It was my turn to be taken to task for my style of communicating. I mentioned Stafford Beer’s proposal on a syntegrity team workshop, modeled from the icosahedron. In Beer’s scheme there are thirty people who talk and try to resolve planetary issues. I said that Beer and his colleagues were using a lot of rigor as well as imagination. Mark interjected, "That’s what irritates me about you. You bring up these terms, but don’t define them." Daniel tried to defend me, and I came back with more information, which was construed by Mark as name dropping. Mark mentioned his class in logic at Kings College where they discussed the notion that when one "appeals to authority" it is usually the sign of a flawed argument. I interpreted this to mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Continuing with my articulation of Beer’s work, I used the term "iteration," and talked about the symmetry and asymmetry of geometry and the efficiency and phase transformations of the icosahedron. Continuing my quest to describe Beer’s philosophy of the icosahedron I stated, "The icosahedron doesn’t stay stable; it is like an electron, and there is a book called The Enigmatic Electron. Why do you suppose Beer picked the icosahedron as the unit for discourse to resolve planetary problems, or at least as tool for us to educate each other about such planetary issues?"
After Mark’s critique of my mode of communication, Daniel used the phrase "action at a distance," and I said something about Bell’s theorem. Johan defended me on the subject of quoting authorities, and said that it was certainly acceptable to quote an authority such as Gregory Bateson. This dialogue community moved on to Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Daniel said that in a way we were all anomalies to each other. Like part of a puzzle, each says what he or she thinks, from their own experience. Following along the typical approach of this group’s fixation on point-counterpoint -- which potentially can result in a receptivity to other views -- I responded to Mark’s critique by telling him that he played his neutral role similar to the character played by Paul Neuman in the movie Cool Hand Luke. I used Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano to make the point that our culture is repressed. Mark had studied rhetoric and again said that name dropping didn’t make it with him . . . . I said, "OK let’s go into it . . . ."
The writer John Briggs, who participated in a dialogue group with David Shainberg (See TheTransformative Self [1973]), said that in his group he assumed that his articulations were being ignored. Yet, later in the process many of the themes developed among the participants were along the lines of Briggs’s thinking. I have found this to be a similar experience in the Oregon group: especially the realization that most assumptions thwart learning. Briggs said his experience of dialogue motivated him to get involved in small town politics, whereas I have not yet been motivated to become socially involved. If I notice any change it is that I can better accept my limitations with less judgment than in the past.
The group took up the subject of how discourse becomes compressed due to time limitations and the presence of other people. Robbin said something or other and then Mark remarked that things were incoherent. Obviously each of us has a different world view and a different way of perceiving. I returned again to a discussion on graph theory, which is another part of Stafford Beer’s approach. In brief, graph theory is used by Beer to discover principles that are non-hierarchal and aspire to the ideals of participatory democracy. One of the aims of this theory is to understand how people construct reality in the decision making process. As I understand it, the psychologist George Kelly developed a significant amount of its rationale.
In retrospect, I found it curious that Mark put me on the rack for name dropping and because my representations were an "appeal to authority." "Yet, this meeting began by referring to the authority of experts at the university who are teaching classes on metaphor with cognitive underpinnings.
Meeting #28, March, 1995, 6 people
Although this meeting did not have the numbers, it was quite interesting. Juanita spoke about the intent in a query she handed out regarding her efforts to make dialogue more interesting. Johan talked about physicist Richard Feynmen’s theories on the subject of "cargo baggage," and how statistics can be used both erroneously and in ways designed to mislead. The atmospheric flavor was reminiscent of our meetings six months ago when many people stopped attending. Ned talked about the need to keep a shared space open for people. Juanita is currently involved with a community organization. Daniel talked about language theory, and particularly about the postmodern view that after a while language and meaning diverge. He contended that the Romantics elevated language to an appreciation of beauty.
Participants generally talked about extending the dialogue group once I left (in May of 1995), recounted the past, and rememberedthe fact that the group split up once before (e. g. , at the twelfth meeting). Yet this group carried on in a sustained basis. Although the promise of what might have happened if the group was larger was not met, it was a good beginning.
Several people talked about what kind of dialogue MIT was setting up in Corporate organizations. Although they use "Bohmian dialogue" as a template, apparently Peter Senge and his colleague Bill Isaacs do not see that they are dialoguing in a different manner than David Bohm intended. As I have stated earlier, Bohm’s dialogue proposal aimed for a grass roots movement, with as little facilitation as possible. Bohm considered Senge’s approach to dialogue to be what he called a limited dialogue. Mary Tulin’s dissertation is "As We Talk, So We Organize: A Study of the Tacit Processes and Structures of Talk in an Organizational Dialogue" (1996). I found that Tulin did an admirable job with representing a dialogue between union workers and management at a steel plant. Especially insightful was her representation of the intersubjective approach of Austrian-American sociologist Alfred Schutz, who founded phenomenological sociology, which studies how people interact and interpret their everyday life. Social construction and ethnomethodology are important off-shoots of Scutz’s lifework.
In The first 100 years of M Bakhtin (1998), Caryl Emerson mentions that Schutz is of the I-Thou-We school of thought which includes Jaspers and Bakhtin. Tulin’s use of Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology reveals the significance of language and meaning that emerges between the workers and management of the steel plant.
A few statements by Tulin and her mentor William Isaacs still remain unclear to me.
The "push" Isaacs lends to Bohm’s notion is from activity to product -- a causal assumption that ‘these kinds of inquiry produce these kinds of results’. Both Bohm and Isaacs assume a benign, creative reality awaiting discovery by practitioners of dialogue; Isaacs refined the description of its visible effects. . . . The irony of trying to "will dialogue into being," or "make dialogue actionable" -- such as in taking it into organizational settings -- is not lost on Isaacs, who calls it a paradox that is "ultimately resolved through either experience or practice." Most resolve the tension by either promoting "technical processes of conversation or inquiry skills" -- which sells well in practical settings -- or the "ineffable qualities of dialogue" (Isaacs, 1995:7), which tend to be disassociated from ‘bringing about intended consequences’ (Cayer, 1993). (32-33)
It is not clear to me that Issaac’s organizational use of Bohmian dialogue is a paradox. Perhaps there is a contradiction in his rationale.
In Peat’s biography Infinite Potential: The Life and Times Of David Bohm (1997), Lee Nichol, one of Bohm’s colleagues, comments on Bohm’s view of contradiction and paradox.
A contradiction involves two things that cannot fit together, while a paradox which appears at first sight to be a contradiction, on closer examination has a resolution. (273)
A quote by Isaacs stated above regarding the bringing of dialogue into organizational settings seems to be a paradox. Perhaps what Isaacs is proposing is indeed a contradiction, at least as Bohm defined the term to Nichol (cited above); I argue below that it appears to be a contradiction. Isaacs also says that in any "mature artistic practice both are required, one without the other will fail." (1995:7) (33). I concur with Isaac’s contention that we need a mature artistic practice, but I doubt that the approach of Isaacs and his colleague Danah Zohar, who is mentioned below, will generate an artistic maturity that David Bohm et. al. contended could lead to a coherent wholeness.
Danah Zohar says in Rewiring the Corporate Brain Using the New Science to Rethink How We Structure and Lead Organizations (1997):
Dialogue group practitioners differ (as they should!) about the nature of the dialogue conversation. Some, following the tradition of Chris Argyris and "Action Science," think that the conversation should be goal directed, aimed at solving specific problems. Critics say this is too mechanistic. Others prefer a completely open and nondirected conversation, letting whatever comes to mind emerge. Personally, I usually use a both-and approach, setting some vague theme but letting the conversation run wildly. (142)
The action scientist Chris Argyris, who has researched participants in corporate organizational settings, contends that when the crunch comes they revert to past conditionings. For further elaboration see Mario Cayer on Argyris (cited below), or Danah Zohar’s Rewiring . . . (cited above). Chris Argyris’s relevant article is "Good Communications That Blocks Learning," Harvard Business Review (1994).
Don Factor wrote to me that Danah Zohar once told him that she would never personally participate in the face-to-face dialogue known as a "Bohmian dialogue." In her book (cited above) Zohar states that she favors a "both-and approach" to dialogue. Apparently Zohar means that she prefers a facilitator. I see this as distinctly different from participating in a dialogue group in a grass roots manner. Also, in my personal exchange with Don Factor, he indicated that other than attending the meeting in the English countryside, Bill Isaacs has not participated in a non-facilitated dialogue group in a sustained manner at the grass roots level. Perhaps Isaacs and Zohar have been busy with their commitments to the various organizations with which they are engaged. When Zohar says she is for both approaches, maybe this means that her work will eventually include her participation in true "Bohmian" dialogue. As I see it, one could conceivably dialogue both ways, but I feel the value in doing so requires that the dialogue groups be kept separate. For an eloquent elaboration on this issue of distinctions between these different approaches see Cayer’s "Bohm’s Dialogue And Action Science: Two Different Approaches" (1997).
In 1997 I spoke by telephone to Mario Cayer (he was in Quebec), whom I met at the "Dialogue and the Implicate Order Seminar" at Schumacher College in 1992. He had just finished his dissertation "An Inquiry into the Experience of Bohm’s Dialogue" (Saybrook Institute, 1996). Cayer interviewed various participants who had been practicing the proposal espoused by Bohm and his colleagues. Cayer asked the participants some very interesting questions, and separated the reasons people dialogue into five different categories: conversation, inquiry, participative process, collective meditation, and creation of shared meaning.
I contend that maturity in dialogue emerges with praxis, and sustaining the dialogue meetings is necessary for such a maturity to a coherent wholeness. In my inquiries into the various "Bohmian" groups that have been established internationally, I have learned that sustaining dialogue with a significant number of people has been quite difficult. Bohm often said that a theory, in order to show promise, must progress through an incubation period. In my research I have not seen any evidence that Issaacs or Zohar actually have participated in a dialogue group at a grass roots level as Bohm and colleagues have proposed.
It is my understanding that Bill Isaacs and Peter Senge trained facilitators using some of Bohm’s inspiring ideas. The jury is still out on whether or not any independent dialogues have emerged from their training classes at universities or with their clients in the business world. In a personal communication, Don Factor -- who worked with Bohm on ironing out the bugs of dialogue -- conveyed to me de Mare’s view of their work: "By the way, de Mare shared something of this view. He said to me one evening with a sly giggle, ‘You know dialogue is very subversive.’ I, too, took this view, figuring that Bill Isaacs and all the other professionals would (unwittingly) open the door for the forces of chaos and complexity to enter into the systems and, like one of Prigogene’s dissipative systems, shake things up and bring about some kind of cleansing. But so far, this doesn’t seem to have occurred." (08.29 PM 8/10/94 email from Donald Factor)
De Mare writes in Koinonia that one of his Greek friends claims that the ancient Greeks discoursed in groups of fifty or more. I suspect that in our time Bohmian dialogue at the grass roots will take a form more along the lines of a median group of ten to twenty people.
At this meeting (#28) the dialogue community seemed to agree on several issues; it was interesting to see how the group flowed "as one mind." Perhaps "one mind" is an idea that merits further study. We were convivial, and wondered why we had not caught on in the community-at-large. Different members of the group inquired into ways we might attract other participants. I was grateful that people wanted to extend the experiment.
Meeting #29 April, 1995, 5 people
Faye attended with her daughter, who was a sansei from Calgary, Canada. After organizational logistics were clarified, we talked about the sublime and profane in the usual "flotsam and jetsam" manner. During the meeting, Faye’s daughter Mita said, "so this is dialogue," and the group as a whole laughed.
Meeting #30 April, 1995, 8 people
We talked about the education of children. Johan observed that Bohm reiterated what the Buddha said centuries ago, namely that there is an underlying unity in universe. I said "apparently what he said didn’t catch on."
In retrospect, I was grateful that people had given this difficult experiment a try. It seems that the way I was affected in these by-weekly meetings was a lot more subtle than I initially realized. My guess is that some of the others came to this conclusion as well..
The fact that this dialogue group has survived for five years could mean that they have so much ego invested they would rather die than let go, or it could mean that some kind of profound learning has occurred. No doubt it would depend on who you talked to and their mood.
It seems Faye, the mystic, and Daniel, the rationalist, are still furiously dialoguing. In a dinner conversation with Faye, she admitted to be working on Daniel. When he puts his foot in his mouth (by saying something that Faye construes as too intellectual, and too academically rational) she reminds him and the group of what in her view dialogue is supposed to be about.
Although there is no strict uniformity yet, there has been a consensus to continue the meetings.
Second Seminar on Dialogue with Saral Bohm, May, 1995 Ojai, California
This second seminar with Saral Bohm, who, as I said earlier, has been carrying on the work of her husband David, was similar in many respects to last year’s. Yet participating in a large group is deceptive. Whereas one might assume that it is more difficult to communicate with 44 people, I found it easier to get involved with the ensuing discourse. There were various Native Americans at this seminar, and many of them had a great respect for Bohm. With their participation my experience of dialogue was very different, compared with my experiences in Eugene. These people seemed to be tuned into the center of the circle, and their attention spans appeared to be beyond the typical personality conflicts I had experienced in the Eugene group. Their personalities were demonstrated by the sense of humor they exhibited over the most ordinary statements.
I remember someone remarking that there was a lot of turmoil, and I retorted, "Ya, you mean the terms of oil." I meant power of the oil cartels, and Sun Bear instantly picked up on my little joke, and started laughing in a way that immediately loosened up the meeting.
Next: D. Experience in other Dialogue Groups
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reflecton on experience of eugene dialogue

2004-10-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

C. Reflection Of Bohmian Dialogue in Eugene, Oregon**
The Eugene, Oregon dialogue group began with an average of 25 people participating until the thirteenth meeting. After the twelfth meeting the number of attendees progressively declined to ten, and only recently increased (as this Dialogue hits the five year mark). Insufficient numbers of participants definitely affected the group, threatening a lack of diversity of views. Bohm felt that between 15-40 participants were needed for a critical mass, so the question remains whether this particular Bohmian dialogue is a somewhat flawed experiment. Bohm pointed out that his proposal would be subversive to the culture and that this attempt to share meaning with others comes with no guarantees other than the pregnancy of promise that ensues from taking risks with the unknown.
As I am looking at some old notes on the meetings in Oregon, I find my recollections somewhat bemusing. Did I really survive this experiment? Enduring some of its trials and tribulations wasn’t easy. Why had I decided in the first place on trying to initiate a Bohmian Participatory Dialogue Group in Eugene? My answer is that I had been in and out of the area since 1971, I was familiar with the territory, and had conveyed my intent to friends and associates who told me that if I initiated a group they would participate.
Rob Firth, Robert Krohnen, and Doug Goswam agreed to help with the logistics of advertising. Robert Firth helped me locate a meeting place while Krohnen helped place my advertising display which was a paraphrase of David Bohm’s rationale for Dialogue. The main way I communicated to the community is this "advertising display" as follows:
Invitation To A Participatory Dialogue
What is participatory dialogue?
To paraphrase the late Dr. David Bohm,
participatory dialogue is a kind of collective
inquiry not only into the content of what each
of us says, thinks and feels, but also into the underlying motivations, assumptions and beliefs that lead us to do so.
Why engage in participatory dialogue?
Dialogue is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real Communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization.
A participatory dialogue group along the lines proposed by Dr. Bohm. That is to say the group will be ongoing (although newcomers may join at any time leaderless and agendaless and of approximately 20-50 members. We plan to meet for 2 hours every two weeks.
info. #485-2407
Meeting times: Thursday 7:15 p. m. PLACE EWEB
In order to reach a large audience, I placed an ad in the most widely read alternative newspaper in Eugene, What’s Happening. Since Doug Goswam worked at Kinko’s Copy Center we were able to duplicate copies at discount prices. Krohnen, Firth, and I met to discuss tactical issues. Robert Krohnen, who had some experience with men’s groups, felt that there was an ethical need to mention confidentiality, which I did both verbally and in writing. We reserved the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) community room and our stay there lasted about ten months.
Naturally, I found other advertising venues, most of which were free. The Other Paper, Talking Leaves, Oregon Peace Worker, and The Oregon Daily Emerald (the University of Oregon’s student newspaper) were my main vehicles. Besides the logistics of advertising and locating meeting places, I worked on contingency plans for location change in case there were cancellations, (which occurred twice). I also took it upon myself to call, reminding people of the time and place of meetings. The ads distributed in several ways. For example, I posted them on bulletin boards at the University Of Oregon and various health food stores.
I soon learned how competitive bulletin boards can be. A lot of the lingo in Eugene, Oregon is vintage 60’s or "New Age" and, ironically, other people who were advertising events could be quite rude. I advertised at several places and two of them, The Oasis health food store, and The L&L market were to no avail. People put their own ads over mine as if they did not exist! Eventually I designed a palm-sized ad, but as a result the message was diluted to meaninglessness. In retrospect, it seems that word of mouth worked best. We had the good fortune of obtaining a year’s access to community rooms at the EWEB because someone in their office made a mistake. Our group was eventually notified that only one room per year per organization was allowed. (This after we had been meeting every other Thursday for almost a year!) Once this bit of information was conveyed to Rob Firth I located a meeting room in the student union at The University of Oregon. (My friend Carolyn Knox Quinn arranged this for us.)
The operational aspects of the dialogue meeting begin with sitting in a circle and participating in an exchange of meaning, mainly transmitted by the utterance of words related to some issue or event, referenced in turn by the iteration and recursion of the process within the group, which includes the notion of a greater whole. Although each individual expresses an idiosyncratic view, it seems that consciousness itself enters in and directs the general drift of the conversation, often in ways that are uncanny. Usually, the beginning progresses slowly with a silent interval, as if people were feeling out each other’s thoughts. Whatever the nature consciousness, the meaning of this processing indicates that what is happening is quite elusive, as if the unknown immensity of the Universe were coming in to lead conversations not yet formed. Sometimes the beginnings were awkward, but at other times it seemed as if there was almost a preordained set of meanings that were meant to be probed. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the iterations build into a field which subsequently transcends the limits of the repetitive "go-around", both in the content of the language and the process. Content and process "drift" are quite subtle and, from my point of view, the possibility of analyizing "the whole" confirms the true essence of the group process.
There are usually three periods of silence: at the beginning, middle, and end of each dialogue meeting. What we call the silent (ambient noise only) intervals are actually the immanent and transcendent meeting the verbal and nonverbal; the recursive pattern phases into another approach usually rendered by an articulation which emerges from a synthesis of this synergetic iteration. I will discuss nonlinear fractal analogy in social settings later in this paper. In Beyond Dispute: the Invention of Team Syntegrity (1994), Stafford Beer suggests that the reverberations occurring in his more structured teamwork games, which aim to improve organizational planning, are complex and unable to be analyzed. He also contends that consciousness is a consequence of the ouroborus movement (i. e., the circular movement) linked with iteration and recursion, leading to a self awareness. He asserts that consciousness is localizable, and refers the reader to Charles Laughin et al. : Brain, Symbol, and Experience: Toward A Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness (1990).
My intent is to present a sense of the meetings from notes which -- as I said above -- were taken after each meeting, usually between 11 p m and 1 a.m. These notes have been edited for flow. As I mentioned, an average of sixteen people attended meetings during fifteen months in which I participated. I estimate that ten participants are still attending meetings as this dialogue group moves into its fifth year. Due to other commitments, I stopped my own regular attendance in April of 1995. Since then I have participated on the average of once every two months. With the group’s permission I recorded and transcribed a meeting on March 5, 1996 which I include in Appendix 2. Around this time I interviewed one participant, Mark, who later, who was found later found dead in the Willamette river (while I was interning in Hungary). Mark was one of the most brilliant persons I have ever met, and most of the group agreed with me that he made significant contributions towards keeping our inquiries going. When a likely possibility of suicide was determined, many participants were completely shocked. His transcribed interview is included in Appendix 3.
A questionnaire was sent out to the group in order to give the participants a sense of personal involvement and to see how they felt about the creative affects of dialogue on community issues in Eugene. The form and the responses to this questionnaire appear are in Appendix 4. For each appendix 2 through 4 there is a brief introduction regarding my views, in retrospect, about the group record, individual interview, and questionnaires. My aim was to have a record of a meeting for any one who might be interested in a further examination of my experiences.
Meeting #1 February, 1994, 24 people
I explained my experience with Bohmian dialogue at Schumacher college in England in the summer of 1992, and spoke about David Bohm’s view of wholeness and the implicate order as it relates to the dialogue experiment we were embarking upon. I set up a table to keep people informed of other dialogue groups and a sense of the history of the various notions of dialogue. "For Truth Try Dialogue" (1993) was handed out with a newsletter, Dialogue Papers edited by Donald Factor. It contained an experience of a dialogue group in England that had been initiated by Factor, (who I had met at Schumacher in 1992). Factor, one of Bohm’s colleagues, who was originally from the US, went to England to study film in the 60’s. He was the editor of Unfolding Meaning, a book concerning the gathering of a spontaneous meeting with 45 people in the English countryside. I mentioned earlier that this experience might have been instrumental in encouraging David Bohm to investigate and develop the approach to which he devoted a significant amount of time towards the end of his life. Another article I distributed to the participants was Bohm’s "Fragmentation in Science" (1972) which discussed the need for dialogue between people of various backgrounds. A video of Bohm talking to other artists, scientists, and leaders entitled "Fragmentation to Wholeness" was presented. It is from the Art meets Science (1993) conference held in Amsterdam a number of years ago.
More people arrived as the video was shown and after this presentation, the participants regrouped in a circle and talked about the movie and the fragmentation of contemporary life. One women commented that there were not enough females; and another person retorted that it might be helpful to see each person as an individual. This same person commented that he had dialogued mainly with women, and that such dialogue had been very difficult. One man talked about forming opinions of others based on the projections of one’s past experiences. One women remarked that this meeting was far too analytical, yet another women (who brought her baby to the event) said that it wasn’t analytical at all! Another participant mentioned that we have a tendency to call some events factual when, in many instances, this is not the case.
Bohm suggested that the words like "forever," "never," "always," and "all" are examples of absolute conditionals, and therefore unyielding nonnegotiable assumptions.
Meeting #2 March, 1994, 19 people
We expected to see the video Dialogue Consideration (1990), but it had not arrived from Ojai. The video that I did show was The Future of Humanity (1983), a dialogue with J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm. My rationale for showing videos with Bohm and colleagues was to acquaint people in an informal way with the concept of dialogue. At Schumacher college in England we were able to have a weekend with Bohm’s colleagues. But the circumstances in Eugene, Oregon required that I move along the general notion of what Bohm was driving at, which turned out to take two months to communicate. The subject of time and the implications of "becoming" were shared between Krishnamurti and Bohm, who went into etymological derivatives throughout their conversation.
There was a good exchange of ideas at this meeting. I was hopeful that we would start going more into the process of dialogue, which we did in a way. Looking back, I wanted things to happen too quickly. I had assumed that everybody was bouncing to the notion of Bohmian dialogue .
Meeting #3 March, 1994, 16 people
The video Dialogue Consideration did not arrive from Ojai. This aspiring community began its meeting by wondering what the guidelines were for dialoguing. The need for a facilitator was addressed; but, as it turned out, different people facilitated the group in their own way. I mentioned that forming a circle was one of the guidelines; someone said that the group spoke English was another. Alex wondered why we were dialoguing in the first place; and I replied that there are reasons for dialogue, and that our culture generally discourages it. Someone said the relationship of all life was a motivating factor, as far as he was concerned; he asked if there was an essence that could possibly be touched via the process.
I introduced my experience with John Cage’s Music Circus at Stanford University in California in February of 1992: by being "inside the sound" while 250 musicians were playing, I was too far inside my own experience of playing to hear the others. Someone used the word God loosely, and that probably triggered the topic of Spinoza and the various commentaries by participants that "god" means different things to different people. Another participant mentioned he was reading a book concerning the fact that the major awareness of death affects people in daily living. He contended that this fact brought us back to the constructive drive of artists. Concepts like space, time, positive, negative, and God were used, and someone stated that in communication there is a critical need to define terms.
At this stage in this experience of dialogue everyone was playing the role of facilitator, some better at it than others. In each dialogue I attended in Eugene, Juanita consistently pointed out trends in the conversation, and suggested to the group to look at all the views, since this experience of dialogue was not a question of right and wrong.
At this meeting, Juanita talked about the concept of yin-yang, and the sense of motion and darkness of color that she got from it. Someone mentioned that not dialoguing was an example of a necessary part of the process within dialogue. Another participant said that the process of dialogue had changed his views of things in just the brief time of this sitting.
Meeting #4 April, 1994, 20 people
The Video Dialogue Consideration (1990) finally arrived. I requested that each member of the group sign a Human Subject Permission form -- if they so desired -- which indicated that in my academic reportage I would not use real names, and I would respect each participant’s integrity. When I began this experience, it appeared to be a substantive question whether I was clouding the experience of no agenda, leader, or facilitator by writing about this for a school program. Apparently no one was critical about my motives.
We moved into the presentation of the video, which lasted one hour and a half, and, in retrospect, I would have been wise to take two breaks. We went directly into a discussion about dialogue. Someone talked about a New Dimension tape from Africa that was about the maturation process, and the problem of literacy in a particular African culture. Another person said that Bohm "talked through his head and not his body." In Bohm’s defense, I mentioned that he had been influenced by Wilheim Reich and I said that when Bohm took walks, he loved to have conversations. This dialogue group talked about identity and of the problems facing civilization; some people were not comfortable with seeing "life as problems," and the notion of a "challenge" was proposed as another way of describing problems. One newcomer thought looking at life as a "problem" was a uniform notion in our group. Many people pointed out that there was certainly not a uniformity in the group; he then spoke about the difficulties of survival and went into the issue of boundaries. One participant mentioned that her boundaries changed with life’s maturation process. The discussion turned to the notion of life being relationship.
Our dialogue went into the notion of proprioception of thought -- one’s self awareness -- a mirroring with others during which words are used to observe or help us get glimpses of areas we are missing. The non-negotiable assumption of an "absolute necessity" was suggested as an example of one extreme, and chance was considered to be the other. We seemed to see this example as a contextual problem within the whole process we called life. I mentioned that Bohm and his colleagues suggested that it is important to sustain this experience of talking in a circle over time to see what can be inferred. Bohm argued that the sharing of opinions as well as an appreciation of the differences developed by the process of keeping the dialogue going over time would lead to new meaning and new orders of perception, which is the sensitivity of intelligence itself. Daniel brought in the notion of the ultimate need to use language, whether we are "stuck in the loop or not" (i.e., marginalized). He talked about a French writer’s idea of the modern and the post modern; the concept that he illustrated was about hybridization between culture and language. The meeting wrapped up to its end with talk of unyielding absolute necessity, attention, and distraction. The last statement of this fourth dialogue meeting was that "those who survive will be those that dialogue."
Years later in the spring of 1997 I was told at a conference on Bohm’s ideas, held in the English countryside, that Bohm originally wanted scientists to dialogue in a form similar to that which "my" group was using. But he realized that in as much as scientists were married to their ideas, they would be the last to go along with such a proposal. Therefore Bohm stated that grass roots was a good place to initiate his approach.
In retrospect, the discourse in the meetings are flotsam and jetsam (profane to the sublime, incoherence to coherence) with iteration and recursiveness that lead to formulations along the lines -- as mentioned earlier -- of Stafford Beer’s view of "a self aware" consciousness constantly accruing but also differentiating in the manner of the recursive repetition that leads to coherent forms along the lines of a fractal in social organizations. This has also been proposed as a viable model for the social sciences by systems theorist Russell Ackoff. In The Democratic Corporation: A Radical Prescription for Recreating Corporate America and Rediscovering Success (1994), Ackoff writes:
When every part of an organization is organized multidimensionally, the organization can be said to be a fractal. Fractals are entities whose structure is the same at each of its levels. In view of the fact that fractals are currently making possible major advances in our understanding of nature, one would think that fractal organizations would attract the attention of social scientists, but not so. Because comprehensive MD organizations operating with internal market economies are fractals, every manager within them is a general manager no matter how specialized their unit may be. Each manages a complete business. Their differences are largely of scale. This characteristic of MD organizations simplifies succession planning and management development. Finally, the circular organization, the internal market economy, and the multidimensional design can all be combined in one organization. The power of each is significantly enhanced by its interactions with the others. (196)
On the subject of consciousness as the coordinating influence in my experience of dialogue, I ask myself: is it localized somewhere neurophenomenologically as Beer and Laughlin, have it? Or does this phenomenon include the notion of nonlocality as Bohm and Hiley in The Undivided Universe (1993) have it, with the implication of what appears in context of the participation of the observer (128). Or does it occur in dialogue formulation along the lines of the fractals as Ackoff has it? Cultural historian William Irwin Thomson in Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness (1996) says that time is one of the significant questions with regards to the implication of the meaning of consciousness. He mentions in passing that David Bohm’s Implicate Order proposal has time in space. Art historian Jose Arguellus also proposes that time is a significant factor in this question of understanding the meaning of consciousness. For further inquiry I recommend his The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression (1975).
Whatever I think about the conundrum of time regarding consciousness, is time itself a major influence in what is going on in my experience of dialogue? Ultimately I don’t know, but it seems that looking at many views seems to be a clue to understanding such a big question. On this note I recommend David Ray Griffin’s work on Whitehead in Physics and The Ultimate Significance of Time: Bohm, Prigogine, and Process Philosophy (1986). This collection of essays edited by Griffin shows the continual development of Bohm’s work on the Implicate order which is currently being explored and extended by his colleague Basil Hiley. See Hiley’s article "The Algebra of
Process"(1994). Physicist Paul Davies in his most recent book, About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Universe (1995) says that there has never been a physical experiment that has been able to demonstrate a flowing time. I will close this very cursory array of views on fractals and time with a view echoed in Maurice Nichols’ Living Time and The Integration Of Life (1984)
And the starting-point of work of this kind is, as Karl Barth says, "to realize the ambiguousness of temporal life. And it is not only necessary to feel that there is some other interpretation of things but to desire to hear and know it." A clear attitude, a distinct thought, must exist similar to what was in William Law’s mind when he wrote that once a man understands that he is down here in time and space in order to awaken to another state of himself, everything that happens to him, whether good or bad, comes to have a new meaning. (243);
Meeting #5 April, 1994, 25 people
Because I attended the seminar in Ojai co-ordinated by Saral Bohm, I missed the fifth meeting. Various people told me that about 25 people participated, and I was told that Alex talked about the lack of coherent listening that he perceived going on.
Dialogue Seminar with Saral Bohm, The Oak Grove School Library, California April 22-24, 1994, 44 people
As I stated earlier, Saral Bohm is carrying on her husband David’s work on dialogue. She came from London and was instrumental in facilitating this event. From the beginning Saral Bohm was adamant that the materials she received from Bill Isaac were not indicating to her that the corporation’s strategy was on the right track. In response a participant said that organizations are made of people.
When we started to dialogue on Friday night, Joe Zorto, house physicist (community described), got us going with the question about the money motivation which might drive the corporate world’s interest in dialogue. The forty-four participants went into the question of corporations and their interest in dialogue with the intent of maximizing their organizational performance in order to increase their competitive market edge. Peter Hendeman said maybe they would share their wealth; and a teacher from the Oak Grove said that we were not doing anything elitist with this dialogue experiment. Someone talked about having expectations on what dialogue would be about, and this group also discussed the notion of individual intentionality. Then the group entertained the idea of preverbal learning which had been proposed by Vytogsky, a Russian learning theorist. It was agreed that inevitably one has to use words. Saral had asked Sabrina Chong and Jack Ravick -- authors of a book on learning organizations -- what they thought the corporations were doing in their dialogue experiments. They remarked that the jury was still out.
In retrospect, I wondered if here was an attentive awareness among the participants through this process. Someone said that we were going from one thought to another, and the analogy used was that the experience is "like an academic boxing match." Another participant said that this group is the best we are going to get. The value of suspension of talking was addressed along with the notion of omni-views.
On the second day Rick from Cape Cod gave a summary of the group’s apparent intent. The group talked about death, and how consciousness is affecting our talking about intelligence, and that this dance of dialogue is pointing towards meaning. I talked about death. Saral Bohm, Lee Knight, and Paul Horteman apparently had participated in a dialogue in Ashland, Oregon that had some Native Americans in attendance. Sam, who played a significant role in modulating the group through many incoherent phases of the process, talked about being an artist and flunking math five times.
Saturday we began with the subject of how different cultures view dialogue. The group went into the notion of the universal mind and universal intelligence, wondering if there were not many truths, rather than one. Saral made it quite clear that her husband worked upon a reflection of important questions which interpenetrated into nonverbal essences which in turn surfaced with a rational clarity. She explained how death causes different interpretations of time; when someone close to you dies, that changes your view of time. When the community says that it questions someone or some issue, the implications could be that you are erroneous, or out of line. Sabrina, and Jack, whose wife died in his arms, seemed to think that they had an effective model which was ideal for dialogue. Carl and Martha responded that this idealized model was not necessary, that it was wiser merely to stay with an open space, with no set purpose. Carl and Martha valued the notion that dialogue is a place where you can say whatever you want, or not say anything. Towards the end of the meeting the conversation kept coming back to Earl’s view as being contrary to nearly all of the other articulated views; throughout this entire weekend he had been in adversarial arguments. Sam the artist modulated this disagreement by referring to a similar experience from a past seminar with Bohm. Four years ago Mountain Hermit and Bill Angel had it out over the way they defined violence. Saral conveyed to the group that Bill Angel was using the word violence in a manner similar to that of a past attendant, who connoted it as a form of energy.
Meeting #6 May, 1994, 10 people
Alex asked me to talk about the Seminar on Dialogue with Saral Bohm which I attended in Ojai. I mentioned that it was a good deal different with 44 people, and contrary to what some might think, there are intervals of possibilities for everyone to speak. Bringing up events that ensued at the last meeting, Alex suggested that not listening can affect a lack of quality. He said that one person talking, and then another person talking about issues that were not related was indicative that there was very little listening between participants. The conversation started with the notion of coming to the dialogue with an empty cup. We discussed that idea, and Salem said she was considering throwing in the towel. She had a full cup. Someone said that with ten it was easier to dialogue, and I said we were behaving more like a family.
In dialogue parlance a smaller group has a tendency to gloss over issues which could lead to troublesome areas of conversation. The contention of the theorists from which Bohm derives his proposal is that more variation will come forth within a large group; but it may take a mindless culture a long time to become mindful.
As the conversation moved along, someone asked if the group knew what listening was, and many participants inferred that time is related to thought which is consciousness -- whatever it may be -- which in turn lead us into the conversation in some uncanny way. Someone used the analogy of their never-washed coffee cup; others mentioned that they slide in and out of some form of meaning. Since I had been put on the rack for not listening, I felt much more aware of the tension between myself and other members. Earlier someone assumed that I was not listening; perhaps they were right. Although the experience did happen to me, I used myself as an example for a phenomena that was common for everyone. This community talked about how the group lapses in and out of its ability to be aware of what was being said by various members. A newcomer, an artist, talked of his participation in a Rudolph Steiner group, and expounded about origins of matter from the cosmos to the bone -- that is, the physical bone -- while he saw such as the center of the circle of time and motion. He also commented on the Cartesian coordinate system and the notion of wholeness, and how scientists desired to be thorough by turning over every stone like a Sherlock Holmes detective movie. He said that scientists’ analyses have caused a distorted division; this analysis has strayed from an approach which enhances the notion of wholeness, whatever it may mean.
I strove to observe the limits of myself in the dialogue. In retrospect the aim is to go with this process of what is, and perhaps see a greater self that is ineffable. This meeting had a form of constraints which was quite different from the last five. There were so few people in attendance that I felt more familiar with everyone, and at the same time the antagonistic reaction of my ego to others became more acutely obvious to me. It was a feeling more than anything, and my own view -- which I think is quite common with everyone -- is that the analogous phenomena of tacitly having to learn to ride a bicycle is what is happening with individuals who take dialogue seriously. In other words, the anxiety that comes and goes on occasion is part of the growing pains involved with the development of a mindful consciousness. I commented above that in the Ojai meeting the ability to cool the extremes seemed to work when events seemed to be out of control. As the meeting adjourned, I asked for suggestions on advertising in order to reach more people.
Meeting #7 May, 1994, 17 people
In retrospect, the movement between conversations seems to demand a thread of continuity but there is no rule that we must stay on a theme. The suspension and listening of the participants with its tacit guidelines is a praxis aimed at equality; this approach to listening could be construed heuristically, along the lines of directional indicators like a navigational compass, from which a demand to sustain varying themes derives. The group explores the suitability of the themes within the context of the dialogue as each issue comes up. There are individuals in the group who do not feel that we are close to being on a theme. I observed that process and content are weaving in and out of each other in a convoluted manner. What appears to be a resistance to each other’s views suddenly might jell into a meaningful exchange between the participants.
Alex started to talk about the subjects of theater, and the audience and dancing, and he brought up the idea that artists were gladiators. Film director Steven Spielberg was called a "clever gladiator". It has become clear to me that discussions (exchanges back and forth among the participants) are a necessary part of Bohmian dialogue. Ned thought that Alex was putting artists on a pedestal, and our dialogue community went back and forth on that issue. Ned, who was a sculptor, said that applause was an attempt to bring in a unifying principle to the group. I said that this community was beginning to trust each other. Alex said that a trait of the west is not to listen to each other; he asked if this group was listening. Responding to this question about listening, Juanita said dialogue is not about agreeing or disagreeing, but listening to differences. Ned said that there were ground rules to dialogue, but they were precepts and not rules. He said dialogue is a verb, and Alex said he felt it was a noun; he experienced dialogue as a revelatory process, and viewed himself as a noun and a verb. Someone said that breathing is a meditation which is analogous to the implicate order proposal. Art and rules were the main themes of discussion. Ned said he listened to the physicist Fred Alan Wolf lecture at the Hult Center, and that Wolf said that the observer created reality. There are several interpretations of reality in our group.
Who is listening to each other? Is this process of dialogue a shared consciousness? Is something greater and beyond leading us out (educating) from the dark corners into understanding?. . .
Meeting #8 June, 1994, 23 people
Alex began by referring to the last meeting in which he proposed that we were being polite middle class people. He mentioned the book Koinonia that I had lent him; the authors contend that going through frustration is a necessary process. Daniel talked about constructed knowledge; that he valued the seminars he was taking at the University of Oregon graduate school; he said that they were not problem free.
Alex remarked that the notion of progress and the expectation that something is going to happen is a conditioning factor of the Western European values. I said that we have had only eight meetings; and Ricardo, who seemed to read my mind, said that we are still just discussing dialogue, and that maybe this group needed a topic to get into dialogue. I said: "Let’s stay aimless. If we did go for a topic, my suspicion is that we would go off the topic."
We are trying to lift ourselves to some height in the communication process; this dialogue community rises and falls again and again in its process. Psychotherapist Yalom has observed the value of limiting his group psychotherapy meetings to ninety minutes (278), while Ernest Lawrence Rossi in his The Psychobiology Of Mind-Body Healing (1986) has researched ultradian rhythms (90 minute cycle), and also says it is best to limit meetings to ninety minutes (121). The talk gets repetitive in this group at the end and at this particular session; it seems that most people were physically tired, at the same time, psychologically energized and hopeful
Robbin felt ambiguous about the dialogue experience. He discussed the ideal part and the part that was not so rosy. He suggested that the group listen denotively and not in other ways, for example, by analyzing the tone of one’s voice. One participant, an artist, said that he brought aspects of the other agendaed group which he was attending into this group, including a simultaneous connection to the other group. Alex said he came to the dialogue group for communion and that there was not something better; the world lacked elegance and quality.
This aspiring dialogue community played with language; honing in to the art of inquiry requires a bag of tricks. There appears to be a fine line between talking and meditation (insight, or proprioception of thought); the group repeatedly uses the example of Polanyi’s tacit learning involved in riding a bike. Ralph said that we "were being polite again!" Articulations along these lines may be an indication that someone is playing the role of instigator, mocking the group. It seems that essences are construed non-verbally by each person. I suspect that occasionally the process has taken this community into proprioceptive flashes, as it were, with the words transcending meaning. Praxis (action) is a way that we learn in this experience, the participants bandy around playing with varying concepts. The Socratic scholar Gregory Vlastos said that mockery was an important aspect of the Greek dialogue. The Greeks had developed their irony in a way that contributed to creative insight. One of the main aims for this Bohmian Dialogue experiment is to see if we can tap into the creative realm at the individual, social, cultural, and cosmological levels.
Daniel, who had talked earlier about the value of the seminar, said that at times it seemed meaningless. At the close, Daniel proposed that at the next meeting, for those who still wanted to talk on a topic, that it be on the reasons for original sin.
It struck me that many in the group were going through the frustrations of this process. For example, it was obvious to me that Daniel and Alex had a bit of animosity towards each other.
Meeting #9 June, 1994, 22 people
We started with the question "Was this group going to be discussing dialogue again?" Ned said that we’re going to talk about nothing. I said that Confucius said "Nothing is anything measured so." Juanita asked me to clarify what I said, and I replied that "I was trying to find in what way one could talk about nothing . . .". The community went into the need to use language; and the natural harmony within the world was discussed. Different issues were bandied about: e. g., the naming of a cat, and the naming of animals in the Bible, the notion of listening, and the difficulty of TV on children’s imagination. Different members talked about pattern and interrelationship, and playing with words in this circle, yet making sure the words were heartfelt. Alex said that naming his cat gave him a connection with his cat. Ricardo and Ned argued about claims of a recent breakthrough regarding the discovery of ten dimensions. I talked about a relationship between wholeness and reductionism that blends together and does not necessarily have polar opposites. I mentioned Sheldrake’s Seven Experiments that Could Change the World and his notion that pets know when their owners are coming home.
Sheldrake posits that nature behaves more like habits than like laws. Another way that I have looked at the question of what is present in consciousness in this setting and experience, is to entertain Sheldrake’s argument that the M-fields from the past are tuning us into this circle, or that within the circle we do tune into these fields. Although this Morphic field notion is a speculative one, there is a lot of suggestive evidence for Sheldrake’s proposal, for example, McDougal in his The Group Mind (1920 ) had experimented with rats at Harvard in the 1920’s. McDougal’s findings suggest that morphic resonance at the physical level is likely. (8)
Daniel talked with Alex about Freud, and the libido not recognizing time, or the negative, the "no" while the conscious world was in time. Alex talked about his idea of progression from matriarchy to patriarchy to individuality. He claimed there were three kinds of people: pleasure people, truth people, and rational people, and Alex contended that we were essentially wise to mix these aspects of life instead of being solely in one mode.
At this phase of the meeting it seemed that the conversation was about the need to be.
Alex elaborated on being as the essence of awareness; that those participating are trying to touch something, but we close off and revert back to the old conditioning. Daniel commented that this dialogue experience had affected him in interesting ways. He said that he was having dreams in the night and that he was back in grandma’s attic. Ned said that concepts are generalizations, and they were necessary. Freud’s ego, id, and super ego were brought up in relationship to de Mare’s group. Someone talked about scientists having expectations and having decided on what to choose, therefore eliminating what wasn’t chosen. This group talked about the linearity of such notions and its relationship to the geometry of language. Daniel talked about Bohm not being allowed to leave or come back to the US as a consequence of the policies of those involved with The House Un-American Activities, and he said that this dialogue experiment was Bohm’s revenge, if you will, of reconnecting us. "Here is your culture and your hang-ups, work with it."
Ned pointed out that there were tools of language that needed to be used to discern language’s appropriateness, whereupon someone asked, "what is the intelligent way to represent this tool kit of language?" Daniel asserted, "When books are converted to movies, books lose their original quality." Daniel contended the meaning of books is more valuable than the meaning of movies. The sacred dolls that the Hopi Indian tribe use were mentioned by Alex, who talked about the Hopi dolls spelling the intervals of silence at beginning in the middle and at the end of each ceremony. Different people talked about language theory in relationship to this dialogue experience.
The next morning I included in my notes that it had been suggested that music and math were other forms of language which work where words do not. As usual, a counterpoint view was put on the table: there were limits to language and math. This was extended to the notion of childhood imagination being destroyed, and the need to go back to the limits of the child’s imagination.
As we talked, the theoretical conversation refreshed my memory of the Piaget and Chomsky debate in one of the literary critic I. A. Richard’s book’s, either So Much Nearer or Beyond. It turned out that it was neither! (See Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, ed. Piattelli-Palmarini [1980].)
Meeting #10 July, 1994, 25 people
Ned said that swimming is the best analogy or metaphor for what we are doing. Ricardo said that he wanted a closed group; we were not getting any meaning and he was thinking of leaving. Someone else uttered that this group wasn’t getting anywhere, and another said, "Is there anywhere to get to?" and that, "We should point out each other’s patterns." Although there was not a uniformity, several participants wanted set topics. As I see it, the process that includes the snag phases of a discussion are part of dialogue. Several people kept addressing the perception of patterns. I uttered a poem that I had written on patterns.
one standing flower
in the sea-tree of you and me
a pattern in number
so many distant
calls felt in close (9)
Where some people saw antagonism between Ned and Alex’s differing points of view, I saw a complementary modality along the lines of the notion of jazz as harmonious and improvisation as part of a process. This point-counterpoint tendency of discussion serves to bring out distinctions that can enhance a healthy understanding of ambiguity. The challenge of the artistry of the group’s facilitation is to prevent the tendency of fragmentation and its consequences and the fragmentation between people became obvious with fewer participants. The main question parleyed between participants is on the ambiguous concepts of creativity and perception. This community aims to observe what is, and fragmentary tendencies have the promise of revealing glossed-over dark corners between people’s articulations. These can have nuances of meaning, which it is imperative each person see for him or her self. The acceptance of another view can be an expansion of one’s circle, and the aim is to cultivate an inquiring form of acceptance rather than a blind one. One needs to be wary of the limitation of observation, as it emerges in the dialogue by the process of holding our thoughts in "suspension."
Meeting #11 July, 1994, 27 people
I had set up a display of dialogue related literature on a table by the entrance for new people, including Bohm’s "For Truth Try Dialogue" (1991) and "Science and Spirituality: The Need for a Change in Culture" (1990); and the recent The Dialogue Papers, edited by Don and Anna Factor and published in England.
Ricardo started talking about the problem of new people disrupting the group, and he proposed that newcomers should simply sit and observe. I replied that such a ruling would imply that they couldn’t talk; I was opposed to that proposal. Later Faye, who was a newcomer, told me that she was appalled by this ruling. I suggested that this community work out a plan for introducing new people into the group. As it turned out, few people took an interest in Dialogue. Juanita and Ricardo, who are married, said that this non rule oriented group had a fetish about "no rules!" I responded that it was Bohm’s contention that the subtleties of the phases over time leads to coherence, and there is a method in the madness of no set rules. I said, "Let’s get on with the dialogue." Alex said, "This isn’t dialogue?" Axel observed that Ned has not listened since coming into the dialogue meetings. Alex asserted, "As a matter of fact within the first few minutes you started bringing in your own view." Daniel said that was rude. Ned said that left him with no recourse, but to say nothing. What I can remember is that Ken said, "Let’s go around in order, and let anyone say something." The group agreed to this, so it seemed; after six people complied, it was Alex’s turn. Alex didn’t respond, but just seemed to be there in space in a pantomime. Daniel said to Alex, "Good for you for not responding." Different people bandied about the distinction between symbols and signs, and Alex talked about the inevitable necessity of having to use our mind. Several members went back into the analogy of this experience of dialogue, which seemed like the harmony-in-dissonance of jazz.
This reminded me of the musical composer Schoenberg’s statement that dissonances were remote consonances. Closure in these bi-weekly meetings is typically one of people overly tired, running statements already made over and over again. With everyone coming in with their experience there is a variation of intense moments; ironically this idiosyncratic mess at the end seems to be something that the group thrives on. It could be that by the end of the meeting people become used to the difficulty of being face-to-face in a circle.
Ralph brought up the lack of humor. This was Ralph’s second time at the dialogue meeting and he was opposed to the intellectuality of the group; while reading Bohm’s proposal in the morning, he noticed that Bohm had portrayed the aspect of humor in dialogue. I mentioned Samuel Johnson’s definition of wit as seeing similarities in unlike things, and said, "who knows maybe he got it from Boswell." Different people in the group started talking on the subject of wit. Daniel made distinctions between low brow, mid brow, and highbrow wit; he said wit is behind the earlier mind-play that you don’t get until two in the morning. I brought up the Eugene O’Neil play which is discussed in Rothenberg’s The Creativity Question. Rothenberg presents a good argument that one of the attributes of creativity is the ability to dwell with two things at once, as exhibited in O’Niel’s play The Iceman Cometh. Roberto said that he was sick to his stomach, and felt that the group was cynical in its feelings. He felt the group had moved into a new area. Different members in the group pressed him for what he meant; it was agreed that there was no consensus. A participant mentioned that our circularity is arising from the discourse-dialogue of the regular people as well as the new people. Daniel talked about the unconsciousness of ego.
Frankly, it is a curiosity to me who, besides Patrick de Mare, influenced David Bohm to take this dialogue inquiry seriously. Bohm and Edwards in Changing Consciousness (1991) mention that anthropologist Paul Radin had conversed with Bohm about the harmony of hunting and gathering tribes.
I was wondering if anyone in the group thought that we were one mind. Some participants did not agree, while others who were sympathetic to the idea of the group behaving as if it were one mind, said that the group was not there yet, although we were heading in that direction. Robbin mentioned that we were creating a community, and the distinction between community and individuality was brought up. The example of Ken’s request, that we talk in turn, was used to point to the collective mind, not the individual, which was exemplified by Alex’s response of not going along with the program. Each individual is involved in this community of dialogue. The question of reason was brought and we went into that for a while. What was reason? Was it making sense, and to whom and what? The group closed with talking about the repressive aspects of reason.
Summing up, Alex’s response of refusing to comply to Kevin’s request that the group talk in an orderly sequence has been the most remarkable single event to date. As I have already noted, the acceptance of another view is an expansion of your circle, so the intent is to cultivate an inquiring form of acceptance, rather than a blind one. One needs to be wary of limitations, since they emerge in the dialogue by the process of holding our thoughts in "suspension."
Meeting #12, August, 1994, 25 people
The meeting began with several participants airing their views about the need to pay attention. Ned used the analogy of the fire, and that this community was trying to build a fire; Alex kept repeating in a mocking manner that the participants were in conflict, and that this group was denying its cultural assumptions. While this group was talking, Alexandra was reading a book, and her behavior appalled a few members. Alex said we were being sentimental, and were ignoring the basic assumptions of our culture. Daniel responded by saying it took him five years to learn the language of academia, and he thought this group had learned to work together quite well on such short order. Ned supposed that he could return six months later, and nothing about this group would have significantly changed. Daniel said that he suspected that there was evolution. Alex said that our dialogue is an insult to Bohm and Krishnamurti, and that is why Roberto was sick to his stomach at the last meeting.
This meeting could be construed as a sign of the group’s mediocrity. Mediocrity means "half way up the mountain." After this meeting, sustaining what appeared to be an interest of large numbers of people in dialogue was to change.
Alexandria, who had been chided for reading a book at the dialogue meeting was wondering what was happening. It was said that listening is the only guide. The recursive question was: What is the intent of this group: one mind or many minds? The unity is in the difference, someone said; the artistry of facilitation was ongoing; what did the group expect to happen as we ascend the mountain? Ned said: to see the Mountain as dung. The thought process among some of the participants seemed quite muddled, and Alex said that he was affected emotionally. Daniel said he kept finding meaning at these meetings, and that is why he kept coming. A couple of the participants commented that this group seemed to be meditative, and in retrospect their view of the group turned out to be ironic, due to what then took place. Ned made a sarcastic remark towards Alex. He said, "He (Alex) had thought about what he was going to say for a half hour." He apologized to Alex later. Ned suggested that this group talk to the center of the circle. Linda said that it was okay to talk to one person.
This point-counter-point communication between participants indicated quite clearly that there is no uniformity in the group, and it reveals that the communications are incoherent.
Alex proposed there was a power struggle, and I said that thought itself is the power struggle, yet a lot of people have not seen this as an actuality. Other participants wondered if organized religion was still with us, or if there was a new kind of inquiry occurring. Daniel talked to Alex saying that the French invented genius. So far in my experience of dialogue, I never had felt such intensity as what was apparent at this meeting. I felt the group swaying. For example, someone was pulling and twirling her hair. The group started to come to a line of closure. Daniel wanted to be remembered for having said beautiful poetry. Juanita talked about her way of seeing through patterns. She claims to have a heightened sensitivity to patterns of the participants from their participation in the dialogue. Mark suggested to her to be wary of that attribute, and said "drop it. Everything just is!" It was obvious to me that the group was fragmented. The talk went on about conflict. Ricardo raised his arms above is head, demonstrating his frustration: "I have wasted all this time for this dialogue experience. Why?" He left for several months and eventually came back, and is a regular participant as the group goes into the fifth year.
Two days later, while on a bus back to Portland, the events of the last dialogue meeting were still running through my mind. I contended that thought itself had caused the power struggle, more than just the individual bickering factions.
Meeting #13 August, 1994, 12 people
I was to find out that Axel had called around saying that too much control was being exercised, and he wanted to form another group. It is my understanding that he held three meetings. I was told that two were oriented around "The Nine Insights" from John Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy. The other meeting was entitled "From Matriarchy to Patriarchy to Individuality."
As mentioned earlier, the group split -up occurred at meeting number twelve. It is possible that I could have handled this situation in another way, but after considering the differences in the personalities (especially dominants like Alex and Ned), I believe the split-up was inevitable. It is indeed a curiosity to me that the group continued after that 12th meeting. On the 11th meeting Faye began participating. She is bemused by the stereotype of "the mystic" that some of the members have of her, and three years later she was still attending and duking it out with the "rationalists" who have been regulars. On the thirteenth meeting Johan, a former physicist, came in, and remains as the group enters its fifth year.
Where 25 people attended the 12th meeting, twelve arrived for this last one. A couple of the participants speculated that some had formed a new group. When the meeting began, Jake said he was a good listener, but not a good talker and, with twelve people, this group was much closer together in the circle. For some reason, I mentioned Joyce’s statement in Ulysses -- the ineluctable modality of the audible meaning. Carl, a musician, said that the process of talking was like jazz music with its free association. I mentioned Ornette Coleman’s statement that it took Europe 7,000 years to agree on the norm of Tone C. Jake, a newcomer, told us that he was in a lot of pain. Due to Bard’s influence, the talk shifted to Buddhism; Bard had been kicked out of a monastery. He said that some of the Asian world had rejected Buddhism. Daniel said that religion was a projection that humanity no longer needed. Faye brought up the notion of the esoteric vigil of attention and sustenance. She talked about a dialectical approach in dealing with the pain. Faye said that esoteric religion was about that which was hidden. I talked about perennial philosophy and the new culture, and underscored that David Bohm had alluded to the need of a new culture. Daniel made it quite clear that he was not into religion. He brought up the literary arts, theoretical physics, and the need to explore with this kind of rigor.
The conversation shifted from religion and Buddhism art, science, and the literary arts -- in particular postmodernism. Daniel said it was the latest breakthrough, and Alexandria said it was a gimmick, a way for academia to keep the power structure going. Daniel argued in a creative manner for postmodernism. I had talked about biological metaphor, fractals, self reference, and autopoiesis; someone else saw the connection between complexity and the postmodern as being indefinable, and the analogy of the postmodern, one that lists a lot of possible ways to look at an issue. Alexandria wanted an answer to her question. Daniel pointed out that the Pan Hellenic was in shambles. As there wasn’t the diversity of people compared to the last meeting, I said that this group experience feels like a family.
Not since early in May were so few people in attendance; although only twelve people came to this meeting, the conversation was lively.
Responding to Daniel’s take on the postmodern, I said that complexities do not always have simple answers; this idealized notion of the past reminded me of the English writer and poet Oliver Goldsmith’s view of the pastoral in nature as a representation of a golden age. Currently most of humanity is living in cities, and the trend does not seem to be changing in the near future, at least not according to the United Nations literature on demographics. I mentioned a book that went into this question in depth The Choice: Evolution or Extinction by Ervin Laszlo. Johan (a former physicist ) talked about specialization. The group had started this conversation about superstition, and I pointed out that Gell-Mann, in The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, said that superstition could be construed as a mythology. I mentioned that artists in our time don’t seem to have a mission.
David Bohm often talked about the value of artistic sensitivity, and that the understanding of the misuse of thought would release creativity in humanity. Henri Bortoft, who has taught philosophy of science and physics, in an article entitled "Goethe’s Holistic Science" writes:
"It is interesting in this connection that in the last interview he gave (New Scientist, 27 February, 1993), David Bohm said that he thought the division between art and science was temporary, and that he expected some day that they would merge. Such a union would give an alternative to the present emphasis on mathematics in science." Colquhoun and Ewald have shown very clearly one way in which such a merging of science and art can be achieved. (60)
In his article "Creativity, Chaos and Self-Renewal" (1992) Alfonso Montuori writes about the creative individual’s ability to adapt to ambiguity and synthesize irreversible differences. Montuori quotes creativity researcher Frank Barron’s psychological view that originality consists of "measures as to be equivalent to the capacity for producing adaptive responses which are unusual" (qtd. in Montuori 202). Barron suspects that besides tolerance for ambiguity, other characteristics are: complexity of outlook, independence of judgment, and androgyny, i.e., Arthur Koestler’s view that each individual is a Holon. Barron’s: No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity (1995) further elaborates this ecology of creativity. Barron’s main contention is that art emerges from a collaboration which includes the contribution of support systems and the qualitative aspects of a society’s dynamics.
Steward Pickett, the author of Ecological Understanding: The Theory of Nature and the Nature of Theory (1994), in the chapter "The Nature of Understanding," write about different modes of understanding that represent three important and contrasting ways humans make sense of the diversity of experience. These modes of understanding are via science, faith, and art (29). I tend to see Bohmian dialogue as an art, especially in some respects to M. Bakhtin’s interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s artistry as represented by the many voices view in his novels. Although the views that come from faith and science are not the main approaches that I am taking, both the religious and the scientific views are not exclusive of the artistic in this experience. For example, there are participants who have religious beliefs and others who were former scientists. This does not mean that this experience could not therefore be approached via the scientific or faith mode of understanding. With broad strokes, the English poet and engraver William Blake contended that Jesus was an artist. The polyphonic many-voices approach that Bakhtin has highlighted in Dostoyevsky’s fiction is similar to Bohmian dialogue in many respects. Yet Bohmian dialogue has a distinctly different micro-culture of individuals dialoguing in a circle where they experience thought’s conundrums as well as its good points. In On Creativity (1998) Bohm states that Metaphysics is an art. The questioning of assumptions that goes on is an example of this view.
Meeting #14 August, 1994, 20 people
We started talking about the idea of consciousness changing in the institutional world within the United Nations. The topic seemed to center at the question of overpopulation, indiscriminate growth, and the need for checking such growth. In the middle of a heated fray Robbin interjected that making choices is the way to change the world.
David Bohm and Mark Edwards’ Changing Consciousness (1991) address this same issue of ecological concern that was bandied about in our dialogue meeting. They write about the need to clear thought pollution upstream, as well as, let’s say, ecological issues downstream. Bohm said that "while all the lights in the city of Las Vegas are shining so brightly, you can’t see the universe because the lights of Las Vegas are blinding us" (159). In other words they used this analogy to suggest that thought is like smog pollution. In Bohm and Edwards’ view, examining the conundrums of thought upstream is a priority issue.
In one earlier meeting it was pointed out that I had not been listening to what was said, and I acknowledged such was true. It was a painful emerging feeling to be caught in the act, and told so candidly, by two other people. I keep going back to that experience; my non-listening is a personal example of the smog pollution analogy, which in turn is a collective and individual phenomena.
Bohm had originally wanted to launch his version of this ancient idea within the scientific community. It remains to be seen whether dialogue has caught on at the grass roots community level; perhaps it is too soon to draw inferences through Bohmian dialogue to the implications of consciousness, and whether or not humanity is significantly shifting its perception, and consequently its behavior. Many of these questions on consciousness now being addressed in the Journal Of Consciousness Studies were poised in the late 1800’s by William James, Charles Peirce, and others. A resurgence of endeavor toward a science of consciousness has caught on within the scientific community, although there yet appears not to be a single coherent theory of consciousness that has come forth from the discourses among philosophers of science, scientists, artists, and others concerned. It may be valuable to note that this renewed interest in consciousness is evident in the physical sciences. For example, see The Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology (1997). Collen Allen and Marc Bekoff (editors) examine the scholarly question of consciousness as represented in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. At this writing Jenny Wade’s Changes Of Mind : A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution Consciousness (1997 ), a multidimensional model, is the most comprehensive I have located. I also find plausibility in the English psychologist Susan Blackmore’s view of consciousness: that the self is a model which tends to be illusionary. In her article, "The Evolution Of Consciousness: What is the Function of Consciousness? And What Is The Relationship between the Observer and the Observed?" in Resurgence (1996) she suggests that one let go of one’s model (26); yet that is not all so easy to do. I am currently looking at these two views as likely possibilities to entertain on the question "What is the self?" The old idea of the big self as eternal and the small self as time bound seems another likely approach.
Quinine showed up at this meeting after not attending for weeks. Generally he says little, yet listens consciously. This time he was outspoken. He said that if you bring an agenda to dialogue leave it aside, or if you bring trash, look at it and deal with that issue. The new people had difficulties with the low turnout. There was another participant, who had come only once; this time he did not talk much.
It was interesting to note a typical phenomena of dialogue interference: Ken was talking, and when Ned came at this issue in a different way someone interjected that Ned had interrupted. Usually the way that interruptions were dealt with was by glossing over the person’s interruption.
Johan said that this is a typical example of the problem of communication within a dialogue group that has no purpose. Daniel said that sometimes in this process there is connection between people, even if it is pointing out the obvious; that is the reason he keeps returning.
Randy (who after this meeting stopped attending) asked if we were dialoguing tonight. He felt we weren’t; Daniel interjected that sometimes we come close to coming together. Randy asked Daniel why he came to the dialogue, and the response was that Daniel found it fabulous. Ned, who is an artist, said that all work was slavery; that he was a slave to art and that might be a good thing
In retrospect I see how difficult it is to understand the complex meshing involved with the art of talking. The homogeneic aspect of more traditional tribes made it quite clear that living and survival were wrapped into the circle. What I find challenging and encouraging is that in the life I am living now, this is a brief touchdown with a diverse bunch of people. When these meetings began I was depressed that there was not much diversity representing different cultural backgrounds, but on reflection and discourse with others, I recognize that significant numbers of people in USA are both interbred and diverse . . . . Was this dialogue group developing a proprioception of thought? I don’t know. As I stated previously, Bohm’s view is that thought is an irrational program. With collective insight or proprioception into the context of dialogue, communication is supposed to move coherently between oneself and others. Bohm’s lifework alludes to a coherent whole, but he distinguishes that this whole is not any kind of coherence. If I have noticed a significant change it is that I have been released, as it were, to acknowledge different views. Perhaps the acknowledgment by one of another’s way of looking at an issue is a beginning towards a change in consciousness, and the further development of this experiment will emerge when more people see dialogue’s significance and begin to participate.
Alex had been the longest talker in this group. What dialogue culture calls a dominator, appears to be a universal phenomena. Ned has now become the one who dominates the group. Allegedly over time this problem will dissolve itself. If the individuals in the group can see through the dark times, perhaps some nuance might emerge.
Daniel wrapped up this meeting by talking about the novel being the model of consciousness.
Other than Native American’s and other indigenous people’s approach to dialogue and the contention by Emilious Bouritinous and Patrick de Mare that the Ancient Greeks dialogued in concentric circles of one hundred at the Acropolis, the closest similarity to ‘Bohmian ‘dialogue that I have identified with is Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel. In the introduction to The Grand Inquisitor: With related chapters from The Brothers Karamazov (1993) Charles Guignon (editor) says:
In a polyphonic novel according to Bakhtin, there is a "plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices." In such a novel any character's point of view is "from the beginning a rejoinder in an unfinished dialogue." Thoughts and statements appear as reflections of points of views in a space of opposition; they make sense only within "a world of consciousness mutually illuminating one another" a world of yoked-together semantic orientations. (xi)
Some of Bakhtin’s thinking displays such a similarity to
"Bohmian" dialogue that several examples are called for. These are from Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, edited and translated by Caryl Emerson (1994):
From Wayne C. Booth’s introduction:
Human existence created as it is in many languages, presents two opposing tendencies. There is a "centrifugal" force dispersing us outward into an ever greater variety of "voices," outward into a seeming chaos that presumably only a God could encompass. And there are various "centripetal" forces reserving us from overwhelming fluidity and variety. The drive to create art works that have some kind of coherence -- that is, formal unity -- is obviously a "centripetal" force; it provides us with the best experience we have of what Coleridge called "multeity in unity," unity that does justice to variety. (xxi-xxii)
Bakhtin’s ultimate value -- full acknowledgment of and participation in a Great Dialogue -- is thus not to be addressed as just one more piece of "literary criticism"; even less is it a study of fictional technique or form (in our usual sense of form). It is a philosophical inquiry into our limited ways of mirroring -- and improving -- our lives. (xxv)
When talking about truths like these, once said is not enough said, because no statement can ever come close enough and no amount of repetition can ever overstate the importance of elusive yet ultimate truth. (xxvii)
From the Editor’s Preface (Caryl Emerson):
But what can be said with certainty is that for Bakhtin, to translate was never to betray; on the contrary, translation, broadly conceived, was for him the essence of all human communication. Crossing language boundaries was perhaps the most fundamental of human acts. Bakhtin’s writing is permeated by awe at the multiplicity of languages he hears: Living discourse, unlike a dictionary, is always in flux and in rebellion against its own rules. (xxxi)
Two speakers must not and never do, completely understand each other; they must remain only partially satisfied with each other’s replies because the continuation of dialogue is in large part dependent on neither party knowing exactly what the other means. Thus true communication never sounds the same, never makes languages sound the same never erases boundaries, never pretends to a perfect fit. (xxxii-xxxiii)
Language, Bakhtin insists is not a product or detachable attribute of a person, it is an energy negotiating between a person’s inner consciousness and the outer world. (xxxiv)
In one sentence he will represent direct speech, indirect speech, quasi-direct speech, his own voice interwoven with the voices and arguments of his opponents and fellow-travelers. Bakhtin’s own term for this is "voice interference." (xxxvi)
The scientific consciousness of contemporary man has learned to orient itself among the complex circumstances of "the probability of the universe"; it is not confused by any indefinite quantities but knows how to calculate them and take them into account. This scientific consciousness has long since grown accustomed to the Einsteinian world with its multiplicity of systems of measurement, etc. But in the realm of artistic cognition people sometimes continue to demand a very crude and very primitive definiteiveness, one that quite obviously could not be true. (272)
In The First One Hundred Years of M. Bakhtin (1998) Caryl Emerson makes it clear that Bakhtin was introduced to this I, Thou,We intersubjective thinking by Kegan, a scholar who did a lot of experiential learning. He visited Bakhtin and engaged such scholars. (10)
One of the intents of dialogue is to be tentative about the nonnegotiable assumptions as they arise. For example, if I hear someone say something that I react to, and it sounds to me that the person is not being truthful, I might be able to gain insight by explicating another perspective that at least briefly loosens up my rigid view. To paraphrase Walt Whitman on contradictions: "If I contradict myself it is because I am multitudes." In these meetings my personal sense of self, whatever it is, modulates from a static into a multidimensional mode.
There are similarities between Bakhtin’s view of dialogue in Dostoevsky’s novels and Bohmian dialogue, yet differences as well. There is an imaginary time line constructed for the purposes of the literal limits of the novel that has come out of the artist’s imagination about the circumstances of humanity. Bohmian dialogue lasts for approximately two hours, in which a microcosm of society represents itself in a micro-culture. The language of Bohmian dialogue tends to be truncated, and the participators learn to perform with these time constraints in an artful way that is very different from the dialogue that Dostoevsky presented in his works. Despite differences, I argue that, at symbolic level of meaning, the commonalty of humanity’s aspiration for understanding emerges within these two different forms of communication. Huston Smith in Beyond The Post Modern Mind (1992), quotes al-Ghazali as one of the world’s mystics: "symbolism is the ‘science’ of the relationship between alternative levels of reality" (108).
Meeting #15 September, 1994, 15 people
This meeting started with Ned talking about the need for dialogue to be alive. Johan was working with computers and used the fact that chips are resilient as an analogy. Somehow we shifted to talking about children, gangs, and violence. I brought up the notion of Richard Birth’s The Edible City. Land reform and an appropriate agricultural technology was the implication of this landscape architect’s book. In Food First (1998) authors Francis More Lappe and Joseph Collins contend that if a community controls its own food supply a mother can breast feed her children and as a consequence have fewer children.
Many times the flow of our dialogue at these meetings would be about the difficulties that went on Oregon locally, as well as on the planet as a whole, be it hatred or whatever. Compared to many places,
Eugene is not culturally diverse. Although two people with indigenous backgrounds participated, there were no black people participating in our group, and the female/male ratio was not balanced. This nucleus was four female participants out of the ten who showed up consistently.
Coincidentally, several times I talked to blind people and invited them to check out the dialogue meeting, but due to more pressing issues they were unable to attend. If I had more financial resources, my capabilities to outreach into the greater community might have been improved. But I had no illusions that this experience of Bohmian dialogue would attract many people, regardless of who I could have reached at the aggregate level.
Jack Utis -- who had attended some of the earlier meetings -- said anarchy was generally increasing as exhibited by children’s behavior and the violence of youth gangs; that the flawed concept was "us and them" and Jack felt that the best solution to the problem was to leave the children alone and let them solve problems spontaneously. He noticed we were not in adherence to the much talked about "ground rules of listening" and said, "you know the rules," to which I replied that we’re supposed to be listening; that as meetings go on it has become apparent it is very difficult to listen. People were still being overly polite. A newcomer said we should communicate with our bodies; she proceeded to arch her back over the chair, and looked at the rest of us upside down. Jack brought into the discussion the musical form known as rap, and performed some, while encouraging us to dance and use our bodies. Daniel said he wasn’t going to do that because he was upper middle class, and that just wasn’t him. There was grumbling about people dominating the conversation and a discontent about what was happening. The person who said that our problems were global, didn’t stay long. Dialogue became a scattered conversation as we broke into small groups.
The key question at this meeting seemed to be: Why do people succumb to authority, and not do their own thinking? The tension that seemed to come from this group is convoluted. One of our aims was to observe the proprioception of thought. Bohm contends that words go into the pipeline and based on polygraph evidence we then have 3 seconds before an effect from the reflexes issues forth. When twenty or more people are present, a diversity of interpretations comes out in the open. This process has reverberations that are not only uncanny, but unfortunately there can be a tendency to single out somebody as a scapegoat. If the participants are wary, this tendency is usually explicated, even if it follows along the lines of point-counterpoint, which itself can reveal fragmentation within the group and lead to an opening into a multiple set of perspectives. As I see it, significant differences, whatever they may be, need to be explicated. When the group is engaged in a patient mode, the notion of unity in diversity unfolds. This is where the role of the artistry of group facilitation has its most difficult challenge of tacking without a leader. To have leaders is so entrained in the cultural conditioning, it seems an oxymoron that a dissolution without leaders could come to fruition.
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Essay Contents
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Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti

2004-10-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

CONTEXTUAL ESSAY
Contents
Definitions
A. Introduction
B. Methodology
C. Reflection Of Bohmian Dialogue in Eugene, Oregon
D. Experience in other Dialogue Groups
E. Conclusion
F. End Notes
Bibliography
Appendix 1
Record of Oregon Dialogue Group
Appendix 2
Individual Interview with Participant
Appendix 3
Questions About An Experience of Dialogue Following the Proposal of Dr. David Bohm and Colleagues

CONTEXTUAL ESSAY
Definitions (1)
[Where these definitions are very specific I have indicated page sources. When using a more general sense of the term I am relying upon my own overall interpretations. Dates refer to published works of David Bohm.]
Abstract: "means to take away, as in ‘extract’" [1989], n. p.
Awareness: "aware means to be watchful - ‘wary’ Awareness includes thought and more than awareness." [1989], n. p.
Belief: "generally a very strongly held opinion. The word ‘belief’ has the root lief, the Anglo-Saxon root meaning ‘love’. What is believed is ‘beloved’ and as such is defended." [1989, 60]
Coherence: "order, beauty, harmony." [1989, 107]
Conclusion: "Conclusion means closing it and there is a place where you can close it. But you are trying to close what cannot properly be closed. And that is violence." [1989, 33]
Consciousness: "historically what everybody knew all together; currently what the individual knows all together." (2)
Communication: "to make something common, or the making of something new together." In Bohm’s view the transformation of consciousness could ensue only from the ability to participate and dialogue, individually and collectively. He felt that it was crucial that it happen together. [1996], n. p.
Creativity: "the fresh perception of new meanings, and the ultimate unfoldment of this perception within the manifest and the somatic. I would say that it is ultimately the action of the infinite in the sphere of the finite -- that is, this meaning goes to infinite depth." [1985, 99]
Dialogue: As Dr. David Bohm and colleagues choose to use the word: a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. Dialogue enables inquiry into, and understanding of the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. The aim of dialogue is to have a shared flow of meaning amongst participants, resulting from the exploration of thought. Since the nature of the dialogue process is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold (1991). "The word dialogue has a Greek root: dia and logos. Logos means "the word" or here I would say "meaning." And dia means ‘through’. So ‘dialogue’ conveys the flow between us rather than an exchange back and forth."[1989], n. p.
Explicate Order: "According to Bohm, the domain referred to by Cartesian coordinates (used to designate location in time and space). It displays the separateness and independence of fundamental constituents and is manifest or visible (directly or with instruments). It is secondary to the implicate order, which unfolds to create the explicated order." [1997, 224]
Fact: "based on a Latin root meaning what has been made or ‘done’. Also the root of ‘manufacture’"[1989, 208]
Felts: "feelings you had in the past have gone into the memory and become programs." [1989, 19]
Finite: "limited, ‘finish’, ‘definite’, ‘set a limit’"[1989, 186]
Fragmentation: "an attempt to extend the analysis of the world into separate parts beyond the domain of what is appropriate. In effect fragmentation is an attempt to divide what is really indivisible; it is essentially a confusion around the question of difference and sameness (or oneness). But the clear perception of these categories is necessary in every phase of life. To be confused about what is different and what is not, is to be confused about everything." [1981, 16]
Implicate Order: "in David Bohm’s view the basic order from which our three dimensional world springs. It is multidimensional and its connections are independent of space and time. The implicate order is identified with the wave function in quantum theory."[1997, 225]
Incoherence: "means that your intentions and your results do not agree." [1989, 106]
Meaning: "The three meanings of the word 'meaning': significance points to something; value means strong; and purpose comes from this high value and can be experienced in various forms." [1989, 51-52]
Participation: "the whole is not imposed, but is each part, and each part is in the whole. Currently participation has two meanings: to "partake of" and "to take part in it actively". [1991], n. p.
Proprioception: "Self Awareness: At the turn of the century Sherrington extended this old Greek word into the field of neurology; likewise Bohm extended proprioception, for example, to mean thought being aware of its own actions. Proprioception -- self-perception. Propio means ‘self’." [1989, 109] (3)
Reality: "in its Latin root res meaning a ‘thing,’ means everything." Bohm says that we have the notion of appearance and essence, but whenever the essence is defined, it turns out to be a more subtle appearance. [1989, 199] (4)
Reductionism: "the principle that seeks to explain complex phenomenon in terms of simpler ones. In the reductionist view, psychology can be explained by biology, which is reduced to chemistry and ultimately to particle physics. Reductionism denies the possibility of a collective property that supersedes and cannot be explained by the component parts." [1997, 227]
Representation: "describes this image which presents the content of the object again in a more subtle way." [1989], n. p.
Soma-significance: "a term used by David Bohm to more clearly explain the age-old problem of the relationship between mind and body. In his view, soma represents the physical aspect of a body while significance is the mental aspect. However, the two are really aspects of one overall reality. Each reflects and implies the other." [1997, 228]
Subtlety: "‘highly refined’, ‘rarefied’, ‘elusive’, ‘delicate’, ‘undefinable’." Bohm says that he can’t define "subtle" since it means "undefinable". "Its root is sub tex, which means ‘finely woven’". [1989, 105]
Suspension: "Bohm and colleagues propose that thoughts, impulses, judgments, etc. lie at the very heart of dialogue. This is one of its most important new aspects. It is not easily grasped because the activity is both unfamiliar and subtle. Suspension involves intention, listening and looking and is essential to exploration. Speaking is necessary, of course, for without it there would be little in the dialogue to explore. But the actual process of exploration takes place during listening -- not only to others but to oneself. Suspension involves exposing your reactions impulses, feelings and opinions in such a way that they can be seen and felt within your own psyche and also be reflected back by others in the group. It does not mean repressing or suppressing or, even, postponing them. It means simply giving them your serious attention so that their structures can be noticed while they are actually taking place. The point of suspension is to help make proprioception possible, to create a mirror so that you can see the results of your thought." [1991], n.p.
Tacit: "that which is unspoken, which cannot be described -- like the knowledge required to ride a bicycle." [1989, 14] "It is the actual knowledge, and it may be de coherent or not." [1996, 16]
Tacit Knowledge: "knowledge which you can’t state in words but nevertheless is present." [1996, 52].
Thought: "The active response of memory in every phase is communicated, transformed and applied in thought. Virtually all our knowledge is produced, displayed, communicated, and applied in thought." [1991] (5)
Truth: "from the root meaning ‘straight’ ‘honest’, and ‘faithful’. In Latin, the word verus means ‘that which is’ the truth is faithful to that which is. In Greek it is alethia, which means ‘not being lethargic’, ‘not being asleep’ ‘being awake and alert’ The Indo-European word is deru and it meant ‘steadfast’." [1989, 97] (6)
Wholeness: "the quality of the whole whose parts have an integral relationship to one another resulting in a functional whole." [1981]. (7)
A. Introduction
This social action project examines a dialogue proposal by theoretical physicist Dr. David Bohm (1917 -- 1992) and his colleagues Donald Factor and Peter Garrett, who developed the approach of leaderless and agendaless participation in a large group. In a leaflet published in 1991, "Dialogue -- A Proposal," Bohm, Factor, and Garrett wrote: "We are proposing a kind of collective inquiry not only into the content of what each of us is, says, thinks, and feels but also into the underlying motivations, assumptions and beliefs that lead us to do so" (1). This constitutes my definition of dialogue throughout this essay.
I intend to explain my experience in a dialogue group I initiated and participated in from 1994 to 1999 at Eugene, Oregon. The group averaged twenty-three people during its first six months and around fifteen in its final six months. At this writing the group has met every other Thursday for approximately five years. Participants sit in a circle and pay attention to thought. I am defining thought as suggested by Lee Nichol in his foreword to Bohm’s Thought As A System (1992): "a process that includes intellect, emotions, reflexes and artifacts which interpenetrate systemically" (xi). Consequently, the active and the passive, concrete and abstract, collective and individual are all systemic as well. Bohm believed that humanity’s lack of understanding of the subtleties of thought is the essential dilemma of our time. Nichol writes: "[Bohm] suggests that collective thought and knowledge have become so automated that we are in large part controlled by them, with a subsequent loss of authenticity, freedom and order" (ix). Bohm proposed that we could learn about thought through the understanding of proprioception. He reasoned that since there is proprioception of the body, individuals should also have such an action for thought. He asked us to suspend our habit of defining and solving problems and attend to thought as if for the first time. Bohm said that proprioception is related to insight, which is a subtle intelligence he called active information, which is of a different order than ordinary mind/matter experiencing. In Bohm’s view, if we pay attention to thought we can dissipate the reflexes that have developed as habits of thought. An example of such a reflex is an explicated assumption, as illustrated by John Briggs, who was involved with a dialogue experiment originally initiated by Dr. David Shainberg. In the article "Can Lessons Learned from Subatomic Particles Solve Social Problems?" (The New Age Journal, Sept./Oct. 1989) Briggs wrote:
To create a situation where we can suspend our opinions and judgments in order to be able to listen to each other. The idea is that we might generate a kind of social superconductivity by having lots of energy in the interchange while keeping the temperature low. To do that you need a situation in which people can talk together freely without a specific agenda or purpose to guide the proceedings and you need a group large enough to develop a number of subcultures. If two people get together with different views, they will generally avoid the real issues. They will protect their separate information pools by avoiding connections that will agitate them. But there are bound to be subgroups wherein those deeper issue will come up. It is not controllable anymore. Eventually the dialogue is going to touch an individual’s non-negotiable assumptions which will liberate high energy. (112, 114)
Briggs recounted what happened when a Zionist and a non-Zionist had a conflict (in other words, a non-negotiable assumption) over their differences: the neutral sub-groups succeeded in cooling the extreme views. What is even more interesting, the Zionist and non-Zionist, who had radically differing views on the fate of Israel, stayed on and kept dialoguing. Some of Brigg’s work with Shainberg and Bohm is referred to in Paavo Pylkkanen’s The Search For Meaning (1989).
Shanta Ratayaka, in his article "David Bohm on ‘Consciousness and Insight,’" New Perspectives (August/September 1996), refers to Thought as a System (1992) in the following manner:
Bohm points out that thought has its own system. We have already seen that both matter and consciousness share a common ground. Therefore the psyche is not independent from the body; psychology is not independent from neurophysiology. (51)
When attentive individuals or groups are learning, proprioception and insight work together and contribute to the dissolution of the reflexes. It is the incoherent thought which is preventing humanity from both understanding its creative potential and developing the ability to meet challenges intelligently. The rationale for dialoguing in the large group is that the shared flow of meaning between the participants reveals the collective movement of thought and its consequential transformation, thus representing a collective intelligence that promises to change our current civilization.
My personal encounter with Bohm’s project began in 1969 when I read The Commentaries On Living by Jiddu Krishnamurt. After several years of examining Krishnamurti’s contentions, I began traveling to Ojai, California, for two or three weeks each year between 1976 and 1985. There I listened to Krishnamurti give what were called "The Talks." These meetings were designed so that there was plenty of time to meet others and ponder over what was being said. Dwelling in the beautiful surroundings of Ojai gave people a sense of natures harmony. Many people met to see videos at The Pavilion, a building that was designed by an architect whose aim was to represent a sense of nature’s enduring beauty and meant to last 100 years. It was there, for the first time, that I saw Dr. David Bohm dialoguing with Krishnamurti. Previously, I read their interview published in Krishnamurti’s The Awakening Of Intelligence (1976). They discussed the limitations of thought, conditioning, and consciousness -- which is its content -- and the vast order in the cosmos that human beings can realize through intelligence and by paying attention "choicelessly" in the moment. Dr. Arundhati Sardesai’s presentation "The Epistemology of J. Krishnamurti’s Philosophy," delivered at the Krishnamurti Centennial Conference, May 18-21, 1995, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, will clarify Krishnamurti’s use of terminology.
Krishnamurti’s view is that intuition or choiceless awareness is Supreme Intelligence, which is spontaneous, effortless and "Sui generis." not a product of evolution. In Krishnamurti’s philosophy sumum bonum is the oneness of observation, observer and observed: the ontology, the epistemology, and the metaphysics. (7)
Krishnamurti and David Bohm had many fruitful conversations through the years and in December, 1998, The Limits of Thought: Discussions between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm was published by Routledge, extending the spirit of their inquiry. Among the other scientists interviewed during video sessions at The Pavilion were Jonas Salk, Rupert Sheldrake, and psychotherapist David Shainberg.
I attended the Science and Mysticism conference at Harvard University in 1984 where Rupert Sheldrake, Huston Smith, Renee Weber and David Bohm were panelists. Bohm spoke briefly about wholeness and parts and articulated a rationale for the wisdom of valuing the whole without throwing out the parts. He made a careful distinction between fragments (in which similarities are confused for differences and vice versa) and parts (which have a relationship to each other and the whole). Bohm stressed that a lack of understanding of the subtleties of thought caused the fragmentary worldview through the inability to reveal a sense of order (e. g., beauty). This fragmentation contributed to the pollution of humanity’s consciousness. Although I had learned that Bohm had taken a new direction in his thinking, I didn’t know the specifics until 1986 when I was introduced to the notion of group dialogue in Bohm’s Unfolding Meaning (1985), edited by Don Factor. Bohm had arrived in the English countryside to deliver a proposal in which he aspired to unify some of the anomalies in quantum theory that had remained unclarified for 70 years. The title of his proposal was "Soma Significance: A New Notion of the Relationship Between the Physical and the Mental," and his intent was to describe the interrelationship of mind, matter and energy as different aspects of wholeness. Bohm called this wholeness the "implicate order" which is enfolded in space and the "explicate order" which unfolds into space. Originally the meeting was to feature Bohm talking about his views on wholeness, but the 45 people attending spontaneously started to dialogue and Bohm dropped his agenda.
Inspired by this spontaneous activity Bohm decided to pursue dialoguing at meetings where as many as 20-50 people would attempt to talk to each other in a manner that was seemingly aimless. Among other places, he talked at The Oak Grove School in Ojai, California every year until his death in 1992. Each subsequent year he elucidated some of the nuances in his ideas as they unfolded. Many of his presentations were taped and later transcribed. In Thought As A System (1994) one of Bohm’s finally published works, he described "the undue use of thought" systemically acting on humanity’s consciousness. Bohm argued that thought is a program of reflexes which works systemically to block the flourishing of creativity which normally emerges in relationship with conscious awareness. He got the idea of large group dialoguing from Patrick de Mare, a psychotherapist in England. As stated in Kreeger’s The Large Group (1975), de Mare had worked during World War II in Northfield Military Hospital with W. R. Bion, S. H. Foulkes and Lionel Kreeger. Subsequently, de Mare, Sheila Thomson, and Robin Piper conducted a median group dialogue with approximately 20 people for almost twenty years. (See Koinonia: From Hate, through Dialogue to Culture in the Large Group by de Mare [1991].) As of 1985, Bohm, with his colleagues Don and Anna Factor and Peter Garret, had been developing this approach of "Bohmian dialogue" for about 12 years. Eventually a form of psychotherapy and sociotherapy may emerge from their work; however, psychotherapy nor any other therapy is the intent of their approach to dialogue. (The concept of sociotherapy is developed in Edelson’s Sociotherapy and Psychotherapy [1970].) In On Dialogue, edited by Lee Nichol (1996), Bohm states:
In the dialogue group we are not going to decide what do about anything. This is crucial. Otherwise, we are not free. We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to do anything, nor to come to any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. It’s open and free. It’s an empty space. The word ‘leisure’ has that meaning of a kind of empty space. ‘Occupied’ is the opposite of leisure; it’s full. So we have here a kind of empty space where anything may come in -- and after we finish, we just empty it. We are not trying to accumulate anything. That’s one of the points about a dialogue. As Krishnamurti used to say, "The cup has to be empty to hold something." (17)
Bohm contended that eventually the dialogue would touch an individual’s non-negotiable (unyielding) assumptions and liberate high energy (Science Order and Creativity, 1987).
With anthropologists Levy Bruhl and Paul Radin, David Bohm discussed the ability of hunting and gathering tribes to communicate as one mind. Bohm also met with Native Americans at a conference in Ontario, Canada sponsored by F. David Peat. Both David and his wife Saral were deeply moved by this experience.
In 1995 I participated in a seminar in Ojai organized with Saral Bohm, who is carrying on her husband’s work on dialogue, which was attended by Native Americans from the Blackfeet, Obijawa, Micmac, and Soto tribes. I was deeply moved by their presence. Looking back, it seems to me that the Native Americans were truly focused into the circle and with a great deal of humor addressed issues that kept the conversations going. The book The Sacred: Ways Of Knowledge, Sources Of Life by Anna Walters, Peggy V. Beck and Mia Francisco (1996) embodies many examples from indigenous cultures of the spirit and intent of dialogue. The book’s third chapter, "Learning the Way: Traditional Education, Not Asking Why," states:
In almost all cases learning the way for Native Americans in classic tribal times meant going directly to the source of the Mysteries. The People voyaged with their entire bodies and with all their senses including language and thought, in order to find the answer to these questions and to aid in their understandings of themselves and their world. (48)
Another example of indigenous cultures is found in No Foreign Land: The Biography of a North American Indian by Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole (1973). They stated (in Briggs and Peat’s Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science of Wholeness [1984]), as follows:
Let’s say the council hall in an Indian community needs a new roof . . . Well, everybody knows that. It’s been leaking here and there for quite a while and it’s getting worse. And people have been talking about it saying, "I guess the old hall needs a new roof." So all of a sudden one morning here’s a guy on the roof, tearing off the old shingles, and down on the ground there’s several bundles of new, hand-split shakes -- probably not enough to do the whole job. Then after a while another guy comes along and sees the first guy on the roof . . . Pretty soon he’s back with a hammer or shingle hatchet and maybe some shingle nails or a couple of rolls of tar paper. By afternoon here’s a whole crew working on the roof . . . The whole community is involved and there‘s a lot of fun and laughter . . . All that because one guy decided to put the new roof on the hall. Now who was that guy? Was he a single isolated individual? Or was he whole community? How can you tell? (276-277)
It is not clear what form(s) group dialogue assumed in the Medieval period, or even if there were "dialogue" per se. In Saving the Appearances (1965), Owen Barfield claims that Thomas Aquinas’ writings represent an ancient principle which Barfield called the "participatory imagination." Barfield’s Coleridgean view of imagination is similar to Bohm’s contention that creativity is harmonious and rational at the individual, sociocultural, and cosmological human dimension.
In the summer of 1992 I attended a three week class at Schumacher college in England which included a component entitled "David Bohm: Dialogue and the Implicate Order: A Vision of a New Kind of Society." The participants began by asking "What were the relevant questions in relationship to Dialogue?" These questions were jotted in this fashion on the board in the seminar room:
Dialogue: -- What is it? Examples? What is its value?
How many are needed and what part is played by facilitators?
Is Dialogue between cultures?Where is it? What is it? Does It Help?Is its plausibility based on physical science?Just intellectual? A Mystery? A fashion?A way to a better way of living?
What is its relationship to other concepts: For example, Mystical & Scientific?
Science Status role in Society? and Cultures?Part of a holistic world view?Bohm’s work & The role of love?The meaning of unfolding?The role of art in relation to dialogue and to science?His definition of order? Phenomenology of mind?Thinking -- How can we see fragmentary thinking?-- The problem of thought pollution? Relationship between abstraction & concrete realities? thought and action? mind and matter? consciousness and time? time and now?What varieties of ignorance are there?
Upon their arrival a few days later, Don and Anna Factor and Peter Garret briefed us on the rationale of Bohm’s approach. They construed dialogue to be more of an art form than group psychotherapy, and we viewed the video Dialogue Consideration (1990). During a break, the informal and vibrant discourse between people filled me with a sense of inspiration. They did an excellent job of illustrating how the exploration of thought via the process of dialogue also reveals the limitations of thought. Engaging with others in this circle made me aware that my view is only one view among many. Approximately twenty people participated, observing and fashioning analogies about the manner in which thought operates in preventing intelligence from allowing appropriate functioning -- e. g., a consequential relationship beneficial to humanity.
If indeed one of the confusions contributing to humanity’s malaise is the undue use of the thought process, it follows that the root causes of humanity’s suffering is our lack of understanding of the subtleties of "conditioned" thought. In Science Order and Creativity (1987), Bohm and Peat point out that the Latin root of the words illusion and delusion, is ludere, to play. They posit that the essence of thought is play and illusion. They say that illusion is false perception, delusion is false thought, and collusion is false togetherness (i.e., in order to support each other’s illusions and delusions). At the same time, they argue there is no word in the English language for "thought which plays true." They hold that creative play is responsible and that by opening up many ways to look at any issue, intelligence becomes sensitive to new orders of meaning and fresh perceptions. These in turn allow one to propose new perspectives, the implications of which are composed as the new understanding unfolds.
Eventually, Bohm and Peat said, supposition in the form of hypotheses emerges. Such hypotheses lead to the disposition by taking the perspective as "correct." They state that basic problems of science and societies originate due to a disposition of the human being to engage in a "false kind of play" in order to maintain an habitual sense of comfort and security. The implication is that these problems arise through current inadequacies in societies’ approach to creativity. Therefore, it is very important to inquire into the significance of creativity and its impediment. Improved insight into what is preventing creativity in one’s daily living can ultimately lead to a way of living that is harmonious (48-52).
As stated above, with these references in mind and my personal investment of time and travel behind me, I decided to start a dialogue group in Eugene, Oregon. After every meeting in Eugene, I made extensive notes of my impressions, making no claims to objectivity, and dutifully filed these notes on a computer disc. I soon learned that the content of the dialogue which continually shifted between the profane and the sublime (with hardly anyone agreeing on any issue), is not the most important issue. It is the process that seems to have the most important aspect of Bohmian Dialogue.
Amit Goswami’s The Self Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, (1995) discusses the concept of Monist Idealism (10-11); in dialoguing it appears as if consciousness itself, be it Monist Idealism or Monist Realism (ch. 9), is calling the proceedings. The dialogues begin in silence, return to silence in the middle, and return again to silence at the end. Movement in this group setting is very difficult to describe. The silence that we lapse into is not necessarily one of absolute quietness but more like a brief respite in a turbulent wind storm. It seems as if in this eye of the storm, a new direction for the dialogue is being poised. The main way we approach this inquiry towards the proprioception of thought, is through the use of words, yet the silences affect the participants’ utterances in often very frustrating ways. No two people seem to think alike in this setting.
The temporary illusion that one may have found a few others who think alike can quickly run into complications. It could be that, upon the next "go-around", people with whom one has just "colluded" have suddenly taken a different view, and one finds oneself siding with the views of someone who was despised only a few minutes ago. Thought can be deceptive to say the least, and the dialogues always proceeded through many ironic twists as the various dramas unfolded.
One of the main inspirations of these meetings was the possibility that what we learned might be useful in daily life. That something which often seems quite ineffectual -- talking with other people -- might somehow lead to insights that could help avert humanity’s (arguable) headlong dash towards extinction, is a recurring theme and hope of this report.
The plight of humanity is embodied in the title of systems theorist Ervin Laszlo’s last book, The Choice: Evolution or Extinction (1994). Laszlo mentions four "shock waves" that the human community has experienced this century: the Bolshevik revolution, the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the liberation of Europe’s colonies and the dissolution of the Communist system after glasnost. Laszlo says we can anticipate a fifth wave arising from overpopulation, the increasing gap between rich and poor, large scale migrations in all parts of the globe, large scale disparities in investment, ecological crises, and so on. The dialogue experience is one approach toward releasing insight. Other creative capacities will be required to not only avoid extinction but to inquire into many other issues of life which lead to the appropriate action(s) needed to understand life’s conundrums or paradoxes.
In Science, Order and Creativity (1987), Bohm and Peat discuss the growth and decay cycles of historical civilizations, as well as the role of creativity in releasing civilizations from the decay phase. They contend that evidence shows civilizations of the late 20th century are in a decay cycle and that our culture does not currently have a cohesive meaning; we have lost the art of dialogue in the West. The dialogue approach described in this paper is one possible way of transforming the decay and arriving at a sane and caring culture.
Bohm and his colleagues define dialogue as "a going through together." Some of the details about this rationale are developed by de Mare, who, in a chapter entitled "The Politics of the Large Group" in Lionel Kreeger’s book The Large Group (1975), claims that the Greeks dialogued with as many as one hundred people sitting in concentric circles, often in theatrical performances. Contemporary Greek philosopher Emilous Bourotinous makes a similar claim regarding the early Greeks (see Danah Zohar’s Quantum Society [1994]). In Patrick de Mare’s most recent book, Koinonia: From Hate, through Dialogue, to Culture in the Large Group, one of the definitions of the Greek word koinonia is "an impersonal fellowship between people," implied as an aim of Bohmian dialogue (2).
In Changing Consciousness: Exploring the Hidden Source of the Social, Political, and Environmental Crises Facing Our World: A Dialogue of Words and Images by David Bohm and Mark Edwards (1991), many issues are raised which relate to the rationale of the dialogue experience. In part, the book comments on the subject matter of Edward’s black and white photographs taken in order to portray great wealth and poverty around the planet. One of the greatest ironies of humanity is that the mobilization for war has historically given people a sense of fellowship. In Changing Consciousness, Bohm and Edwards suggest that through dialogue people can learn a sense of fellowship without the tragic consequences of war.
Bohm’s Thought as a System, published in 1994, is a very good introduction to the proposal of the "proprioception of thought" (thought that is aware of its own actions). I remember that he said that thought is a program that, by definition, conceals itself. Bohm describes the systemic process of thought, which includes body, emotions, feelings, neurophysiology, reflexes, etc. Since the totality of these phenomena can stifle creativity, Bohm posits that a deep understanding on the part of a few could mark the beginning of a compassionate culture.
In Science, Order, And Creativity (1987), Bohm and F. David Peat discuss the "false play of mind" as an attribute of thought. Thought presents illusory issues to us as if they were reality. In other words, thought, without knowing it, separates the "me" from what is happening, which leads to illusory perceptions. This twistedness reveals itself in the exploration of the dialogue group, suggesting that a deeper understanding of one’s makeup could lead to cooperation between people in practical matters of survival.
The Eugene dialogue group, which as of this writing has existed for five years, meets bi-monthly. Everyone sits in a circle, and language becomes the means used to explore thought and its limitations. One reason for this is that people inevitably want to understand and be understood, and communication through language is the essence of understanding (See the work of Henri Bortoft as well as Bohm’s Thought As a System [1992]). The Eugene group has no formal agenda, leader, or facilitator. Bohm proposed that as a result, the events ensuing from a dialogue process would analogously touch and reveal fragmentation, thus contributing to the harmonization of the individual, social, and cosmic human dimensions. Since meaning, which is the content of consciousness, is related to the harmonization of these three dimensions, a proprioception or self awareness would emerge or emanate between the participants. Understandings of the collective proprioception would be an awakened attentiveness to the undue use of thought, which to Bohm is the main causation of the fragmented human world.
To date, On Dialogue (ed. Nichol 1996) is the most comprehensive single documentation of the process. "Perhaps most importantly, dialogue explores the manner in which thought -- viewed by Bohm as an inherently limited medium, rather than an objective representation of reality -- is generated and sustained at the collective level" (vi). Bohm introduces the value of sustaining this dialogue experience:
To my knowledge experience has shown that if such a group continues to meet regularly, social conventions begin to wear thin, and the content of sub-cultural differences begins to assert itself, regardless of the topic du jour. This emergent friction between contrasting values is at the heart of dialogue, in that it allows the participants to notice the assumptions that are active in the group, including one’s own personal assumptions. (ix)
Bohm proceeds to talk about the dialogue experience as moving in a nonlinear and recursive manner:
Even then, the creative potential of the dialogue -- its capacity to reveal the deeper structures of consciousness -- depends upon sustained, serious application by the participants themselves. We find here a pivotal definition: dialogue is aimed at the understanding of consciousness per se, as well as exploring the problematic nature of today’s relationship and communication. This definition provides a foundation, a reference point if you will, for the key components of dialogue: shared meaning; the nature of collective thought; the persuasiveness of fragmentation; the function of awareness; the microcultural context; undirected inquiry; impersonal fellowship; and the paradox of observer and observed. (ix)
Another important point about Bohmian Dialogue is stressed by Nichol:
As Bohm himself emphasized, however, dialogue is a process of direct, face to face encounter, not to be confused with endless theorizing and speculation. In a time of accelerating abstractions and seamless digital representations, it is this insistence on facing the inconvenient messiness of daily, corporeal experience that is perhaps most radical of all . . . As the very nature of thought is to select limited abstractions from the world, it can never really approach the ‘ground of our being’ -- that which is unlimited. Yet at the same time, human beings have an intrinsic need to understand and relate to the ‘cosmic dimension’ of existence.’ To address this apparent disjuncture in our experience, Bohm proposes that attention, unlike thought, is potentially unrestricted and therefore capable of apprehending the subtle nature of the ‘unlimited.’ While the language of such exploration is necessarily metaphorical and inferential, Bohm nonetheless insisted that sustained inquiry into the nature of consciousness and the ‘ground of being’ is essential if we are to have some prospect of bringing an end to fragmentation in the world. It was his firm belief that this fragmentation is rooted in the incoherence of our thought processes, not in immutable laws of nature. (xvii)
The psychological dimension of consciousness, as it relates to the study of psyches, is addressed more thoroughly and specifically in the conclusion of this paper. The notion of a self cast in the multidimensional setting of the Bohmian circle must now be briefly acknowledged.
Robert Ornstein in his "The Esoteric and Modern Psychologies of Awareness," from The Meeting of the Ways: Explorations in East/West Psychology, ed. John Welwood (1979), talks about the tendency of the brain to simplify by model-making. Ornstein writes:
Psychology is primarily the science of consciousness . . . . It is time once again to open the scope of psychology to areas of thought that have not been fully represented in contemporary research and to return to the primary source, to the analysis of consciousness. . . . How we make sense out of the world: First: we use our sensory systems to discard and simplify incoming information. Second: we filter out the amount of information out of which we construct our awareness. These dimensions have been called in psychology ‘unconscious inferences, personal constructs, category systems, efferent readiness or transactions,’ depending on the writers style or level of analysis. (136-140)
This essay concerning my experiences in Bohmian dialogue contains largely personal constructs based on my notes and interpretations.
In his book The Roots of Consciousness: Psychic Exploration Through, History, Science and Experience (1993), Jeffrey Mischlove makes some timely remarks about the return of psychology to the age old question of consciousness. Mischlove writes about the scientific exploration of consciousness:
It may seem ironic that a book titled The Roots of Consciousness has little to say about the field of psychology itself. The primary reasons for this situation is that in developing itself as a scientific discipline, psychology has moved away from the fundamental question of the human psyche in order to address more measurable, tangible issues that could probably be addressed by existing scientific methods. (276)
Mischlove also mentions a remark made by Karl Pribram that the recent interest in consciousness had rekindled age old issues concerning the mind/body -- largely due to the implications of research findings in cognitive science -- especially the findings from the work with split-brain patients of Roger Sperry and colleagues (which appeared as instrumental in closing the gap between the physicalists and mentalists). In the article "The Selfless Soul -- An Exploration into the Psychological Mutation of Man as proposed by J. Krishnamurti" presented at the Krishnamurti Centennial (1995), Manfred Mueller argues:
There currently is no well known psychological theory, no model of the human psyche, which maintains that the individual self and personality is based on a collective illusion of separation based on the erroneous notion of an agency of cognition. Psychology mirrors the popular view of personality as a fixed structure. (6)
Mueller therefore contends:
The most serious question of all remains: Can the mind, heart, and soul of humans change or mutate -- even inside their brain cells -- through insight . . . . There is probably no academic discipline that is as epistemologically fragmented and so full of fundamental methodological incongruities as the field of psychology was until about twenty years ago. There is in fact still no such thing as a single discipline called psychology. As recently as twenty years ago, the research methodologies and basic assumptions for the study of human behavior and experience within the so-called behavioral sciences were as dissimilar as the field of astronomy is from home economics.
In the last twenty years a dramatic paradigm shift has taken place. With increasing acceptance of cognition as a determining factor in behavior, the study of consciousness has become an acceptable object of scientific study, and has resulted in the virtual abandonment of the previous antagonism between the mentalists and physicalists. (7-8)
One of my rationales for placing my work concerning consciousness into a
"multidimensional" setting is stated by D.C. Mortenson in his book Communication, The Study of Human Interaction (1972).
A multidimensional framework eliminates the difficulties of trying to force all the complexities of communication behavior into a single, all-encompassing criterion that invariably ignores both the differences in constituent processes and the interactions among various clusters of factors. Also, a multi-dimensional framework does not force us to choose among competing theories (learning, cognitive balance, social exchange) or even theoretical orientations (functional versus structural, psychological versus anthropological. (24)
This multidimensional approach allows for many views to be probed. It is hoped that the heuristic value of such modeling will result in new insights toward the creation of a sane and viable world.
B. Methodology
I attended a Research and Methodology Seminar with Michael Patton in the summer of 1995. Patton presented a very generalized view to sixty-six Union learners on approaches to research which could be used for the PDE. I read his book How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation (1987) and have followed his suggestions in chapter 4 "Fieldwork and Observation" regarding my note taking. For example, he says "Do not trust anything to future recall. At the moment one is writing it is very tempting because the situation is still fresh, to believe that the details or particular elements of the situation can be recalled later" (92).
The notes about each dialogue that appear later in this essay are my subjective interpretations of the events that took place at the dialogue meetings. After every meeting I wrote down my observations. (I did not do this during the meeting as I felt it would have been too obtrusive to the process.) I intend to represent the highs and lows of the experience of the participants, and to portray the various relationships, differences, complementarities, and other processes (e. g. , the sharing of opinions on the issues bandied about among the participants). It is not the objective of Bohmian dialogue to analyze assumptions, but to warily share them. I reviewed my notes periodically and reflected on patterns exhibited by the participants which I construed to be significant.
Following Patton’s suggestion on field research, my descriptions, including quotations, were recorded as soon as possible after each meeting in order to be as accurate as possible. Patton mentions that research over time, as happens in Bohmian dialogue, is similar to the naturalistic inquiry of Lincoln and Guba, cited below. Peter Reason, in his article "Experience, Action and Metaphor as Dimensions of Post-Positivist Inquiry" (1988), cites philosopher Henryk Skolimowski who argues, "evolution is a creative process and mind is a creative instrument in evolution" (qtd. in Reason : 198). Regarding the work of Lincoln and Guba, Reason states:
There are multiple constructed realities that can be studied only holistically; inquiry into these multiple realities will inevitably diverge (each inquiry raises more questions than it answers) so that prediction and control are unlikely outcomes although some level of understanding (verstehen) can be achieved (Skolimowski qtd. in Reason 198)
Reason continues on the subject of the creative aspects of a co-creative inquiry:
As Skolimowski argues, the Mind and the Cosmos are co-creative: the world we know is the creation of the human mind, and has been made and re-made in different cosmologies . . . . As Bateson points out our epistemology is encoded in our sensory apparatus. This means a shift in forms of consciousness, an opening of new sensitivities, will bring about a shift in epistemology and thus in our reality. (199)
In chapter four of his book on research methodology cited above Patton writes: "insights, ideas, inspirations, and yes -- judgments, too! will occur while taking notes" (95). In Reason’s article cited above, Lincoln and Guba further state that they are drawn to adopting a position of created reality, but since that is an unnecessarily radical stance, for their purposes they adopt the position of constructed reality (203).
Another aspect of inquiry in their essay pertains to how realization regarding the limits of thought may encourage more creativity to come in daily living.
In such a cooperative inquiry relationship, all those involved in the inquiry endeavor to contribute both to the creative ideas that go into the research -- the initial ideas, the methods, the conclusion, and so on; and also participate in the activity which is being researched. (205)
Reason says that Skolimowski’s proposal is for a holistic and participatory knowing. Skolimowski proposes that there is a reciprocal relationship between the parts and the wholes. Participation is implicit in his model where the parts partake and participate in the whole. Reason says that this notion of participation is the central idea of a co-operative inquiry paradigm. Skolimowski argues in his The Participatory Mind: A New Theory of Mind and of Universe (1994) that participation is the oldest methodology (181).
Michael Patton’s suggestions in his chapter 5 "Depth Interviewing" were very helpful. I strove to follow his advice about the desirability of asking open ended, clear questions. In my Questionnaire I followed his advice about asking singular questions instead of multifaceted ones. His most useful suggestion was his statement "questions about the present tend to be easier for respondents than questions about the future" (121).
On March 5, 1996 the dialogue group consented to an audio taping of its meeting. In the spring of 1997 I had the tape transcribed. I went over these transcripts many times in order to reflect on what took place and to correct any errors. There were several, and the whole process was tedious and time consuming. By the time I left the group to work on my learning agreement, three people had consented to an interview. Each interview was ninety minutes long. This was my first experience as an interviewer, and I found Patton’s suggestions to be very supportive.
Due to several factors, which include my financial limitations, I represent only one interview in the appendix. This took place on March 13, 1996. Subsequently, while I was interning in Hungary, the participant I interviewed was found dead in the Willamette River. The other participants I contacted felt that I should represent this person and I did so .
Questionnaires were sent out to fourteen participants (those who agreed to give me their addresses). Eventually I received ten responses. I took these handwritten or typed responses and read them into a tapes which were later transcribed. As with the group and individual participant interviews, I spent many hours reviewing these tapes for my own reflection.
Patton mentions that the naturalistic designs appearing in Lincoln and Guba’s Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) are appropriate for elucidating the variations over time -- i.e., as participants and conditions change. These representative dialogue meetings illustrated many such changes. Lincoln and Guba propose four criteria to ensure trustworthiness under a naturalistic paradigm, which they recently have termed a constructivist paradigm. Their criteria for their naturalist inquiry are: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. The approaches I used in each category are as follows: Credibility: My participation in the group was sustained over time, and my reflection was represented in the contextual essay. Transferability: My representations in the contextual essay communicated my experience and interpretation of dialogue as proposed by Dr. David Bohm and colleagues. Dependability and Confirmability: My notes were made after the meetings, and are reflected in the contextual essay. I also made careful selections for my questionnaires, and, overall, I kept records for the examination of this work by members of my dialogue group and my committee.
In a recent essay titled "A Participatory Inquiry Paradigm" (1997), researchers John Heron and Peter Reason reappraise Lincoln and Guba’s constructive paradigm and espouse the value of experience and participation as a significant component in the inquiry into creativity. The Bohmian argument that the understanding of the thought process is essential to creativity is similar enough to Guba and Lincoln’s view of a constructive paradigm that I extend their model in the context of Bohmian dialogue, and I conceive of this extension as highly original and creative.
Due to the unique nonlinear nature of the dialogue experience, the reader will find my interpretations (analysis) indented and italicized, offsetting the field notes and embedded in the meetings. This will be obvious. A survey of the literature as it emerges in the context of my experience in this dialogue setting is represented in the appendix
After a due consideration, in order to respect the context of the meetings (i.e. use of the vernacular, what people actually said) I tried to maintain their flavor as much as possible in my notes. To reflect the holistic nature of my experience, this form of analysis has been enhanced by reading Henri Bortoft’s The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature (1996). Bortoft’s insightful view was helpful in organizing my notes along the lines of the Continental School, exemplified in Gadamer’s encapsulated remark: "Being which can be understood as language and perception always includes meaning" (qtd. in Bortoft 26). Bortoft also refers to Harold Brown’s Perception, Theory and Commitment (1977). Brown says that "the essence of understanding is through language" (334). Bortoft also refers to Brown’s view that "there cannot be a cognitive perception of meaninglessness because in the act of seeing the world, it is meaning that we see" (53). Merleau-Ponty, Brown explains, considers abnormal perception to understand normal perception: "Because the proper objects of perception are meanings, Merleau-Ponty is led to say: ‘because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning’" (335). The tradition of phenomenology and hermeneutics goes back to Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, etc., and much of the thinking on Goethe’s view of science and form of analysis is what Bortoft terms hermeneutic phenomenology.
Therefore my methodology, as stated above, integrates various aspects of wholeness from Boftoft, Brown, Merleau-Ponty, etc., and relates them to my probing of Bohmian Dialogue. The inquiry of subjectivity of the parts through the whole (along the lines of Bortoft’s philosophy of science) complements Lincoln and Guba’s paradigm of post positivism. Another example of a subjective inquiry in relationship to wholeness that is similar to Bortoft’s proposal is the co-operative inquiry of Peter Reason and colleagues at the University of Bath discussed above.
Next: C. Reflections of Bohmian Dialogue in Eugene, Oregon
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who was emerson's janitor

2004-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

years ago i met the pastor of the unitarian church in brooklyn nearby, boston university

he told me that the writer of walden used to do janitorial work at this church

coming and goings toings and frowings

2004-10-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

michael kessler has published a book entitled " history of the future"

it is an iuniverse.com publication he illiustrated the work of buckminster fuller

and goes into the good reasons for a global electric grid system

there have been many books written on this subject

it seems, there yet, remains to be a lack of a blueprint be it non linear taoist

or design.

more later

nick

amazon head hunters

2004-09-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

i was queried by someone who does not use the internet or libraries for that matter

to find a book "the amazon head hunters by a writer von hott (sp)

if any one has a lead on this e-mail me at nicku@efn.org

planetary consciousness consideration

2004-09-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

reflecting on a statement made by cultural historian william irwin thompson, that

inquiries into the sciences, arts and spirituality are best kept separated, reminds me of

henri bortofts contention of whole and counterift wholes,as described in his book on

Goethe and the wholeness of nature, the title which escapes me at this moment.