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.

Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti