CONTEXTUAL ESSAY Contents
Record of Oregon Dialogue Group Individual Interview with Participant Questions
About An Experience of Dialogue Definitions (1) 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) 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:
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. 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.
Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti |
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