The dialogue began with a couple of people informally chatting about how one observes the movement of the moon. Mark wondered about the scientific explanation. No one really knew, but Mark said that he should!

Among the things we talked about were ESP, telepathy, and the general subject of psi. Mark said approximately 60 percent of scientists believed in it, while only 30 percent of psychologists believed in the likely possibility of psi phenomena.

Daniel talked about teaching students critical thinking in college composition, and the difficulty he was having. Ned talked about keeping the dialogue going in the fire. After this meeting a participant had voiced that at one point she had thought about punching Ned. In other words, she was aware of violence. I suggested that it was thought itself that created the illusion that her animosity was directed specifically toward Ned.

This situation described above could be one reason why there is so much small-group fraternizing (chatting) after the group adjourns. I made an attempt to civilize the back-scatter/collusion mode -- as it were -- by inviting whoever wanted to be my guest to nachos and drinks at the nearest available restaurant. It was interesting that in retrospect this move on my part was to no avail. The necessity for the group to have an impersonal fellowship became evident to me. Eugene is a small town, and it was not uncommon to meet other members of the dialogue group (including former participants) at some coffee shop or social event. At these informal get together the parties usually mulled over what had gone on in a previous meeting and often we commented on who was unaware, or the most eloquent, or the most boring.

Daniel spoke critically of Krishnamurti and Bohm saying that during their presentations together they were merely being "poetically polite" to each other. He mentioned that Krishnamurti did not use big words like many postmodernists. Then he suggested that we learn to use simpler vocabulary in daily living.

Lark talked several times about listening and talking into the center of the group in the "I" mode instead of we, and he articulated "I am one talking in circle." One new participant said that she disagreed with this.

Ned said that the process of dialogue clarified his thinking as time passed by. Yet Mark didn’t believe that the notions of "rational" and "irrational" were becoming clarified. I spoke about the invention of the cipher, as an insight into a natural principle introduced into Europe by Persians from Northern Africa. I recalled Buckminster Fuller’s view that the Romans kept everybody dumb through the use of Roman Numerals. One cow scratch Roman Numeral I, two cow scratch Roman Numeral II, etc. Then the cipher’s significant meaning was discussed: nothing was something, the empty column that goes back to the abacus. Sailors and nomads developed this tool for the practical activity of navigation. The group returned to the value of language as a tool and the ability to talk telepathically for long periods of time. Somebody acknowledged that they experienced this, but not for quite as long, and the group went back into dialoguing about consciousness. What did it mean? The group began a conversation about space, time, and experience.

It was quite difficult to use logic to understand these abstractions The number of potential and actual communiquŽs that are reverberating at one meeting is beyond my ken.

As I said before, another way that I could have looked at the question, "What is this consciousness that is ongoing with this experience of dialogue in this setting?" is to entertain Sheldrake’s argument that the M-fields from the past are tuning us into this circle; or that within the circle we do indeed tune into these fields. Morphic field notion is a speculative one. McDougal experimented with rats at Harvard in the 1920’s. Paavo Pylkannen, a student of Bohm’s, did a dissertation "Mind, Matter and Active Information: The Relevance of David Bohm’s Interpretation of Quantum Theory to Cognitive Science" (1993) which refers to Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation as the hypothesis of informational causation. Pylkannen’s dissertation argues that "Bohm’s view differs e. g. from that of Sheldrake in the sense that the quantum field is assumed to have a small energy field, whereas Sheldrake’s Morphic fields are not energetic" (101).

As we talked, the group went into a phase that seemed to be modulating. In dialogue it is a common phenomena to be able to foresee when a new topic or concept is emerging. Sometimes this phenomenon literally feels like waves of heat. Bard spoke about meditation of Tibetans in a cave, and then alluded to the "cave" of our group as multiple angles of perspective, and the proprioceptive vision of meaning that domains of thought misrepresent. Daniel said that "telepathy" occurs only in the absence of lying, and that statement was stated as "telepathic." Lark talked about the fact that it was acceptable for everyone to talk about the same topic, if we could only break out of our own self-created constructs.

I have opinions about some of the attributes of the individuals within our group: Daniel is remarkable at critical inquiry; Mark is the prober, and one of the most brilliant dialoguers I have met. Quinine who speaks rarely, is a good listener. Ned, who is an artist, has a propensity to conceptualize. Juanita draws issues out of people that enhances their meaningfulness; that explicates and opens the conversation for possibilities of further inquiry.

On one hand, dialogue aims for participants to be as unmediated as possible; yet the group wants concepts articulated clearly.

Following along the lines of trying to clearly articulate concepts, Faye pointed to Ned’s lack of coherence, especially the way he seemed to be thinking out "statements." She was asking him for clarification, and on many of the issues which the group exchanged, Faye contended that Ned made categorical assertions which were in reality more along the lines of neti -- neti (not this -- not that).

In a willy-nilly ambiguous manner the dynamics were facilitated by whomever had the best skills at guiding the phases of the process, especially when the meetings were getting too polarized.

To those who have not been involved in this process, I should underscore that one of the difficulties is tuning into and making coherent distinctions from the various cues that ensue from the ebb and flow of content and process. It is futile to describe the ebb while the group is in a knot that wavers analogously to a tangled tango of flotsam and jetsam. There is a tendency to avoid (gloss-over) the self-references of the other participant(s). These recursive movements in time are not measurable to ordinary thresholds of sensorial meaning, perceptionally constructed, or created reality. See Stafford Beer’s Beyond Dispute: Team Syntegrity (1994).

Bohm and Lee Nichol, in Conversations (1989 & 1992), discuss the value of free play in discourse, and that conscious use of words are used to roust out one’s perspectives. The importance in this parleying is to pay attention to the notion of the nonnegotiable assumption in the context of the conversation, which needs to be seen and acknowledged by oneself, until there is no sense of probable guilt imposed on the individual by the group.

The subtle texture of the domain of consciousness, whatever it is, includes the beyond. The beyond -- as represented in the unanimity of experience within the Mystical tradition, and especially in reference to objectivity -- has been clearly elaborated by Stace in Philosophy and Mysticism (1960). The beyond phenomena seems to arise when an attunement happens in conversations between participants. The conversations in these dialogue meetings have a nonverbal value that is on an equal basis with the verbal.

During the last go around a significant amount of the talking between participants took place on the subject of postmodernism and hermeneutic interpretations. Daniel asked if we could learn to speak in a simpler language, and he mentioned that Krishnamurti had the ability to communicate in that way.

An interesting incident happened at the last meeting. When Sally arrived, I gave her two handouts by Bohm For Truth Try Dialogue and Science and Spirituality: The Need for a Change in Culture. The latter was from one of Bohm’s last talks at a transpersonal psychology conference in Prague. She dropped them to the ground. I did not say anything, but it did cross my mind that she might be psychologically disturbed. A few weeks earlier she had approached me, and when she asked for coffee money, a friend helped her out. She seemed to be in a strange state. Who can judge such things?

Meeting #17 October, 1994, 13 people

When I began to participate in this dialogue group, I was examining Gadamer’s interpretation of Plato in Robert Sullivan’s Political Hermeneutics: The Life Of Early Gadamer (1989). It is Gadamer’s view that Plato was a realist, who "learned as he went" by the dialogue process.

Daniel started talking about his students and "Plato’s Allegory of the Cave." He said "the story says that humans are chained in the way they look at issues, and what appears to be real isn’t." Daniel was wondering if one could talk along those lines in this dialogue group. Faye started to talk about evolution and higher planes of awareness. This group assumed that the cave was in the dark. Hence when we see the light, it isn’t light. This was suggested to be an a example of the vicious circle that humanity is caught in. It seemed to me that we could kick the subtlety of this around forever. The variety of interpretations of this cave took us into questions like personal advancement, progress and evolution. One said that humans are supposed to be social, and Americans were not; we were laughing a lot more than I had witnessed in several previous meetings.

Johan talked about being a scientist, and later getting into the interpretation of Plato and seeing the value of it. Reiterating the statement I made above concerning Sullivan’s interpretation on the Early Life of Gadamer, I brought up the notion that Plato was a literary artist who saw philosophy as politics by other means, and learned as he went. Gadamer contends that Plato was by no means an idealist. Ned brought up Bohm’s contention that thought is illusionary. Mark spoke of our ideas about the allegory of the cave as coming from memory, and he said that humanity was but an historical conclusion. Alexandria said we should just stick with facts, not personal diatribes or abstractions. Chris, a musician, talked about the ecologist Gregory Bateson’s observation that sensation of difference comes from thresholds of novelty and regularity.

We went into the personal story mode. Someone had just returned from Thailand and said that he felt like a virus or an alien in another country. Daniel said that the credit card aspect was the key factor for why he felt that way. It was said by many that this group needed to get out of its own human centeredness, or anthropocentricism. Someone asked if cultural difference was significant, with regards to interpretations of personal boundaries.

This statement was glossed over; it seemed that glossing over people’s views at times was a necessary selective process that this group learned to do quite well. I assume that the group did this so to adapt to the limited time parameter of ninety minutes. It appeared to me that the redundancy of the themes would eventually lead to an airing of the glossed-over view at a later meeting.

The group as a whole kicked around the notion that words are what we need to use to roust out thought, which could lead to a coherent process that was similar to Arthur Koestler’s idea of the holon. This group also bandied about the notion of enfolding and unfolding in relationship to the micro and macro realm which the pre-Socratic philosophers and others along the millennia have speculated on; in some cases these ancient thinkers made accurate predictions. Returning to Plato’s analogy, someone said that our human world was just another cave, and somebody had just made it out of the cave. I brought up the notion that this group was not diverse, and Johan said that we were in contradistinction to Medieval France. The notion of words getting in the way and preventing us from seeing was heavily contested . . . . As this group phased into the next set of articulations, Lark talked about mathematicians working meticulously on abstract stuff, and that they got to the point and were able to "grok" reality. This idea of mathematicians having figured it all out was contested by others. Someone wanted to know how the ideal of the hologram could be of use; I said it was an oxymoron, and that Wittgenstein had put us into that mess with his notion that the function of a language is its use . . . . We were talking about this complicated idea of suspension; it seemed that one can have one’s own opinion, yet you hold it back a little to get the drift of what is happening. The group wanted to know where all this thinking came from; someone said books, memory, and the collective of humanity.

Ned talked about a white crow homunculus, and said he had learned a lot from other people; a non Christian view of Plato was aired and a view on the development of Christianity was mentioned. We conjectured that in the past people lived with awareness; and the word synergy as a Greek derivative was used as an example. Several people on the next go around wanted to know why, if someone wanted to dialogue, their assumptions would have to be examined. Although a little rocky at first, in the final analysis they seemed to concur that examining assumptions is a good thing.

Someone tried to pin down whether Faye was a scientist or a mystic, but she would not allow herself to be pigeonholed.

It was interesting to note that Faye consciously used the terms man and mankind without feeling that she was being offensive. She saw it as meaning collectively the same thing as humanity.

Juanita responded to Faye’s use of language, saying, "I am only giving you a hard time."

Meeting #18 October, 1994, 15 people

Quinine asked if we had learned anything about this elusive subject of thought, which Bohm, quoting J. Krishnamurti, said is like a snake around our neck: i. e., dangerous. Apparently the dangerous side of thought is not easily understood. Bohm’s elaboration is not seen so vividly. The group started to talk about creative imagination, and this idea was taken in with the notion of dialogue as a creative tool. Mark said something about interpretation, meditation, spontaneity, and the dynamics of science that seemed to be a similar belief system. Faye talked about Manly P. Hall’s Morse Code translations, and that somehow they related to the significance of the circle. Mark said this experience of dialogue was distinctly different from a salon. An Utne Review (1991) article on Salons had included David Bohm’s proposal on dialogue. To most of us, a salon seemed to be like a country club. Ned said that when he first came into the group he thought it was acceptable to say whatever was on his mind.

Johan asked about science and philosophy. He contended that the philosophers were talking in a specialized language, so it was rare when they talked about physics. We talked about pi (3.14 etc. ) and how it was a model to be replaced by an interpretive model. Johan mentioned Archibald Wheeler’s take on the participatory person that has been extended by the philosopher Henryk Skolimowski in The Participatory Mind: A New Theory Of Knowledge And Of The Universe.

Robbin, who had been away traveling for a while, implied that this experiment of dialogue reflected a representation towards the whole. The word tribe historically implied something that was exclusive of another tribe. He alluded to Marshall McCluhan’s Global Village.

The homogeneic aspect of traditional tribes made it quite clear that many attributes of living and survival were wrapped into the circle. Considering the alienated life many of us are living it is inspiring to touch down with a diverse bunch of people even if it is only briefly. When these meetings began, I was depressed that there wasn’t a diversity of people from different cultural backgrounds; but upon reflection such is tricky, because a significant number of people in the US and in Eugene are somewhat culturally interbred and diverse. Many others in the group felt the same way, that the dialogue participants were becoming quite familiar ( regarding the issue of an impersonal fellowship too cosy) with each other. For example, there were distinct differences that represented diversity regarding the issue of heterogeneity-vis-a-vis-homogeneity, as well as another issue concerning the different interpretations of mysticism and the rational.

Different members questioned the virtue of technology, and this questioning went on in the predictable point-counterpoint mode, which, as I remarked earlier, can be a necessary precursor for an opening towards multiplicity and beyond. One participant said there was no way out of it, humanity needed to use technology to deal with the mess we’ve made. I said that language was the first technology.

Daniel talked about his LSD experience. He likened his experience of dialogue to a cultural enactment. I was thinking of an Alaskan tribe who performed rituals to adapt to vitamin D deficiency due to a lack of sunlight in the North.

Meeting #19 November, 1994, 17 people

We started the evening with the issue of where we should meet as we seemed to now have a choice. After some discussion, I brought up the notion of a friend of mine mandating for a vote by secret ballot to eliminate the police department in a small town in New England; because the library funding had been cut in that town, my friend’s constituency almost won. Someone said I was "off the wall." Apparently I had misinterpreted a previous comment.

It is difficult to be as unmediated as possible in the articulation of one’s thoughts and feelings. Once the tone of the meeting had been set, it was difficult to enter the conversation and change the dialogue into another mode. At some of the meetings it seemed that there was a demand to inquire into a universal theme and find the commonalties and differences. The views of each participant kept the content forever varying. The dynamics of the process were facilitated by whomever had the best skills at guiding the phases, especially when the meetings were fragmenting.

We started to discuss the subject of thought and mentioned Bohm’s use of thought as referencing the past. Ned had talked about the flag waving, the wind waving, and the mind appreciating the mind waving. When we kicked that analogy around in relation to thought, someone with a very quiet voice suggested that we take the approach of "no thought." Mark said that this kind of talk was a belief, and henceforth the group bandied about distinctions between concept, reality, experience, and consciousness. The last statement along these lines was that reality was made empirically.

Faye argued for a new experience, the religious experience in a mystical domain. She seems to favor this point of view, and used terms like the Akashak records, straight knowledge, vigilance, etc. Louis, a linguist, who had once worked with Native American Indians, said that the perception and the concept sometimes approached similarity. Faye said that we were on the verge of breakthroughs several times. Someone else said that it was only an assumption that we were making breakthroughs. Ken and Mark had asked Faye to explain her definition of mind in more detail. They felt her terms were fuzzy at best. Louis defended Faye’s story of the new experience as being one of "no-thought."

As I have said, the acceptance of another’s view is an expansion of your circle, and the aim is to cultivate an inquiring form of acceptance, rather than a blind one. One needs to be wary of limitation as it unfolds through the process of holding our thoughts in "suspension."

Someone suggested that the flag wave/mind wave idea was an old Buddhist wise tale, but no one agreed. Carl brought up the idea of the relationship between desire and thought; one example he gave was that of the math whiz who works hard and then gets the "ah ah " experience. Our group was trying to find out tacit assumptions being discussed by various members. A person from Malaysia talked about thinking and the need to pay attention, that each person has their own container and point of view. The difficulty people had with understanding the varying definition of terms kept surfacing.

Ned admitted to being a provoker, and Juanita replied that if she had an emotional attitude it was difficult to listen without the coloration of dislike. Ned asked if there was anything he could do about this situation, and Juanita said no, that it was her problem, and she had to work on it.

Bill Bent (a colleague of mine) who attended a Buddhist dialogue group in Portland, Oregon for over a year, once remarked that Buddhists often ran into problems as follows: If he was not getting along with somebody, he would befriend this person to understand what it was about the person that produced difficulty, the idea being that the resistance one is experiencing with someone else is an internal conditioning. By dialoguing with this person it might be possible to gain insight into such conditioning. My observation is that this approach was eventually used by many participants.

Although the sides that participants adopted on various issues were complex, I represent a simplified example reduced to two different personalities: Daniel spoke about his seminar experiences at the University of Oregon, for example, and he occasionally harped about the rhetoric of science. A character profile of Faith is one where she quotes the mystical tradition, for example, Alice Bailey & Manly P. Hall. Faye espouses the virtues of this tradition, which is in contradistinction to Daniel, who is a self professed rationalist. But even with them, as with all of us, there comes a point where the merging of the "consciousness process," (whatever it is), with its varying aspects of immanence and transcendence, goes into "phase." Even if this phase is momentary, the consequences of the shift suggest the possibility of seeing another view.

Johan, a former physicist, spoke about the physicist Gell-Mann, who founded the Santa Fe Research Institute. Gell-Mann once remarked that superstition could be construed as mythology. Johan said that it was puzzling to use the symbols of language, for example, words like language, to claim reality as if it were the key to meaning. What did that word reality mean anyway?

Our group went back to the analogy of the flag, and the wave of mind and so on. We closed this meeting using the flag-wave-mind analogy as a way to appreciate the value of many perspectives.

Meeting #20 November, 1994, 15 people

This dialogue community started to talk about paranoia in the world, and I mentioned the ethnographic work of the anthropologist Malinowski, who studied a tribe in New Guinea. According to Malinowski paranoia was the cultural norm for this tribe. It has been said our American culture is a paranoid culture. We started talking about the concept of ratio and different definitions of it; our dialogue community agreed that we were learning to speak a new language, that the dialogue process was similar to learning a new language. At this meeting one newcomer wore sunglasses. He asked, (as Ken had at an earlier meeting, ) to talk sequentially around the circle. Many replied, "we’ve already been through that experience," and that they weren’t interested in repeating it. I can’t remember who said that there was not enough of a pause between speakers, but I said that one person’s millisecond might be someone else’s second. The conscious intent to talk on impulse, and its value in bringing out hidden assumptions was articulated. It was also pointed out that our culture obviously is not oriented to the cadence of -- let’s say -- a Native American Indian tribe.

I introduced an article from Dialogue Newsletter edited by Joe Zorski where a group had lapsed into two hours silence. We phased into another area of conversation: proprioception (self awareness) as a sense of thought watching itself. Daniel had spoken about his experiences as a teacher, and about Bohm’s notion of bringing ratio into balance with imagination. He used Coleridge’s interpretation of imagination, and

conjectured that Bohm was using a deconstruction to get us to an appreciation of this meshing which often occurs at the dialogues. I talked about autopoiesis (self-making) as a model (proposed by various scientists) to give insight into the meaningfulness of relationships. Maturana and Valera called this relationship structural coupling. I construed autopoiesis to be similar to the implication of the meeting between the eastern and the western phases of humanity which is discussed by Filmer Northrop in The Meeting Of East and West .

In Bohm’s view, the proprioception of the body and the mind manifest as subtle aspects of one reality, and in an undivided universe the individual is related to the social cultural and cosmic dimension. The meaning of an undivided universe, whatever it may be, is beyond a solipsistic definition of the individual. In the context of the group’s articulations, meanings for such terms as frustration, ambiguity, and non-linearity, or the seemingly lack of an orderly procession of similar differences and different similarities are in fact, orders of succession, which the Bohmian dialogue addresses, while probing to understand order; this process includes the use of rationality and the inferential. In short, Bohm viewed chaos (as exhibited in Bohmian dialogue) as a form of order. In her book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (1993), Mae -- Wan Ho, a colleague of theoretical biologist Brian Goodwin, writes about the implications of quantum coherence at the global and local levels in relation to the subject of wholeness. Her research suggests that maximum global coherence and local freedom is moving at the edge of uncertainty, and that nature is coherent in this way.

Bard talked about a "zombie state," the coup de grace that has taken over the world. I brought up the Noosphere as a web of connections that possibly supersedes the fragmentary mis/dis-information campaign of the public media. The public media glaringly misuse language, and consequently their knowledge is predominately without meaning. The Noosphere analogy is beyond knowledge, beyond world, a wisdom. It was acknowledged that human beings are not engaging in feedback with each other, they are conversing. Faye reiterated the notion of dialogue as shared meaning between people. I had been reading Composed in America and was wondering why John Cage found so significant the need to allow for space between people. His view was somewhat similar to Wittgenstein’s: what cannot be said is passed over in silence.

The inherent nature of the dialogue process is to be frustrated, in doubt, and ambiguous about nearly every issue. Many inquirers into Bohm’s work have stated that Keat’s approach of Negative Culpability is similar to David Bohm’s view of living with uncertainty.

For example, the experience of Bohmian dialogue is supposed to lead into an insight on right living, or clearly thinking. From such insight a self-correctional process should ensue, but the question remains as to whether any of the Bohmian dialogue groups have met that promise . . . . Listening to a variety of views was difficult for many. Even if this dialogue group did limit each person’s time, we would still have work through the same process. There would still be disagreement and misunderstanding from the multitude of interpretations.

Someone uttered the semanticist Alfred Korzybski’s statement that the "the map is not the territory, and whatever we say it is, it isn’t. It is always that, and so much more."

Meeting #21 December, 1994, 12 people

Different members started the evening by discussing the internet in general, and the experience of dialogue on the internet. I have engaged in a dialogue by e-mail and, in brief, it is an entirely different experience than meeting personally while sitting in a circle. Daniel said that dialogue was subversive. It is a difficult notion for most people to "grok" that there is no aim or set purpose to this experience, that it is merely a space to share one’s view. We began to talk about myth as making meaning in life. One person kept going back to Bohm and his analogy of proprioception and the limits of thought. Ned talked about "many voices and many interpretations," and the notion of the time that it took for each person to process what we believed was going on. He brought up the notion of art as aspiration, and I said art is an affirmation of life.

Bohm felt that at this junction of humanity, the social and cultural dimensions were the most significant areas of concern. Daniel pointed out that there were many interpretations of reality, and many kinds of stories. Alexandria left early; her only contribution was the statement that the internet was one of the power structure’s strategies for control and domination.

Daniel then talked about Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed & other books. I talked about one of his students, Johnathan Kozol, who had written Death at an Early Age, Illiterate in America, and Rachel and her Children. Kozol said he that he wrote these books in order to stimulate social action, but instead he got awards.

This falls in line with the contention of repressive tolerance proposed by Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse. As I understand Marcuse’s meaning, whatever is subversive to the existing power structure is neutralized by being turned into a commodity.

Bakhtin cited above, elaborated on the "Dialogic Imagination;" and Buber’s work on the "I and Thou" has a similar aim of the receptivity to the moment. I find it curious that in Pedagogy of Praxis (1996) Gadotti (a pupil of Freire) keeps Buber at arm’s length. Bohm had been hopeful that this dialogue proposal would begin at the grass roots level. I believe that Freire’s work does exemplify a grass roots approach. Jameson, a postmodernist theorist (introduced to me by Daniel) contends that there is a false play of consciousness that abounds in humanity. This is somewhat similar to Bohm’s view, yet different, since Bohm does not divide mind from matter per se. For those interested in further inquiry, see his proposal in "Soma-Significant/Significant-Soma," a chapter in Unfolding Meaning (1985).

I received an E-mail from Don Factor about his view of praxis ("learning as we go") in contradistinction to Gadotti’s view of praxis. It is like work experience. Praxis (action) is a way that we learn in this dialogue experience. The participants parley and play with various issues. In his book Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991), Socratic scholar Gregory Vlastos says that mockery was an important aspect of Greek Dialogue. The Greeks had developed irony in a way that contributed to creative insight. One of the main aims for this dialogue experiment is to see if we can touch into the creative realm at the individual, social, cultural, and cosmological human dimensions. Sometimes I sensed multi-facilitated skills developing. Someone would keep the flow of the discourse in a relatively harmonious track, and yet one would beg to differ, and politely and succinctly parley with the other(s). Most of the dialogue community seemed to have picked up the skill of handling limited time in a very artful way.

I used the term solution, in response to a problematic issue and Ned said there was no one single solution.

For some reason this led me to think of Charles Olson’s Muthologies (1978), as well as his Poetry and Truth: The Beloit Lectures and Poems (1971) wherein he defines myth as "what is said of what is said" (47). (11)

This etymological distinction gives me the sense of recursive conversation that has an on going self-corrective process within the context of the social cultural human dimension.

Daniel talked about a seminar he attended on ecological literature which included the brightest people he had seen in a long time, all with intent to earn a living in this world. Howard Reingold, a former editor of The Whole Earth Review, had been in Eugene talking about virtual communities. He used the analogy of holographic imageries rendering illusory events to appear real. The limits and dangers of technology were discussed and I mentioned some of the of the neo-luddite’s views.

In Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Bluff, (1990) there is an elaboration about the existing computer hype. Ellul’s philosophical perspective is an interesting counterpoint to Howard Reingolds’s proposal regarding the value of virtual communities.

Ned started taking about the limits of design, using the outdatedness of the toilet as an example. He believes that the whole world is in agony, and admitted that he was angry. Daniel said that he was touching upon Kant’s moral imperative; Kant’s philosophy was discussed by the group.

As usual, the beginning moves slowly with an interval of no talking, almost as if people were feeling out each other’s thought patterns. It is difficult to discern the exact meaning or logic of such "processing;" it seems as if an ineffable resonance emerges or emanates to lead the conversations. Sometimes beginnings have been awkward, but other times a preordained set of meanings seemed to be present for no other reason than to be probed. Midway through the dialogue, this group seemed to notice a pause as if consciousness itself was directing the event. On the whole, we seemed to mesh together very well. Our community seemed to feed off each other almost like the Portuguese man of war (coral life). This analogy of an ecological community is similar to Frank Barron’s view explained in his book No Rootless Flower (1995).

Meeting #22 December, 12 people

Ned began questioning whether there was any hope that dialogue will have value out in the real world. He said that it seems that humanity is doomed. Robin said that each person would take this micro-culture experience (which mirrored many of the issues in the real world) out into the real world, to be addressed in their own way. Juanita talked about the scientist Varela, who had recently lectured about the notion that awareness first appears in the body. I am familiar with Varela. Mark talked about his interpretations the meaning of dialogue and why he continued attending. Many said that they did not understand what was going on, and they continued to attend for this very reason.

Daniel had much to say about Kant the philosopher. He spoke about the concept of being, nothing, and becoming. Juanita responded to his very intellectual comments, by asking what he meant. He said that he was talking about via negativa ( a non-dualistic approach of inquiry). A new participant said that she had read Depak Chopra, a former supporter of Maharishi Transcendental Meditation, and that Chopra helped her to solve problems. Daniel responded that he had a fear of meditation; later he was cross-examined and he clarified what he meant: he traveled with continual trepidation, of being fooled by fallacious perspectives; that he didn’t want to do it wrong, -- politics, relationship or anything else. Juanita continued to question him. Ned said the process of dialogue was about consciousness, not problems solving per se, but "problems as process". This dialogue community again proceeded in multiple tunings. Ned said that it was impossible to listen and talk out a thought . . . .

Mark, who is studying cognitive science at the University of Oregon, made a few remarks about the implicate order and the explicate order, and Bohm’s primary model regarding ink dye in glycerin. (See Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order.) When the cylinder is run forward the dye is imperceptible; but when reversed the ink becomes visible as individual strands). Each person responded with varying interpretations. Juanita claimed that her acuity was in seeing patterns in people’s relationships based on their communications in the group. Mark responded warily about the danger of making an issue of pattern recognition. I suspect he was alluding to the idea that wisdom is beyond definition. Daniel continued by saying that he was leery about so-called meditation. He asserted that he never meditated. Somehow this led into a discussion on Protestant work ethic. On such issues as meditation perhaps each individual must pay homage to their own conscience. Someone remarked that this group listened with formulations in mind. Johan, (who brought up Wittgenstein’s views that the function of language is to "share something useful") observed that what can be talked about is often passed over in silence. I said that the same process went on in the Ojai seminars. The dialogue between participants wove in and out of varying conversations . . . . I asked, "How do we know that the enactment of body is distinct from mind?" Johan said that he didn’t care; he had already lived most of his life, and getting it right was no longer such a high priority . . . . Ned responded that as a consequence of this experience he was now more socially involved than previously.

It has become apparent to me that the private thoughts I have about dialogue are being transformed simply by being in the circle. The meetings are at the most two-and-a-half hours, yet it is interesting to note that there is transcendence, for a while anyway, from ordinary daily living. Maybe this explains why so often people are reluctant to want to leave, a reaction I sometimes call the "wrapped-up-in-tangle-of-the-tango-of-the muddle-of-the-mouths". Yet, in this micro-culture it is clear that the flow of variation in the discourse between people is not that much different from the daily grind of living.

Robbin claimed that the essence of the dialogue experience is having no expectations. We talked about the mystery of what is happening in our group, (by mystery I mean ambiguity).

In this community I often talk as if I don’t really know what I am saying; my words come out metaphorically. The literary critic I. A. Richards, in Complementaries: Uncollected Essays (1976), said that metaphor is the use of words to describe events that cannot be put in words.

Someone spoke about binary logic, mentioning that artificial intelligence computers can write poetry. I said they can do it, but not with the understanding which comes from weathering the thaw of frozen experience rendered human by the feelings and pain, a necessary phase in the cycle of human experience. It was conjectured that a small number of people could influence the world. David Bohm once referred to a biblical saying that ten good people could change the world.

Robbin asked, "Why do we express our own thoughts and limits?" As he was thinking he also seemed to be probing; and it seemed almost as if he was under the influence of the muse. He said, "Do we get anything from this dialogue experience?" One is supposed to be observing assumptions, people's references, how they vary . . .

Our next meeting occurred on a holiday. It was an informal get together at a cafe and I did not count it as a formal meeting.

Meeting #23 January, 1995 15 people

Daniel began talking about the distinction in literature between modern and postmodern, explaining that 1965 was the dotted imaginary line (i.e., the transition between these two phases). We were talking about synthesis, abyss, and boundaries. Out of the blue Ken asked if we could turn off the lights. I said that didn’t interest me. Later, I remarked that ergonomics is a factoring of variables in human’s environmental thresholds, a satisfying of everyone’s needs.

We took a vote about whether or not to use the lights in the room. Six people were in favor of lights; nine voted no. Nevertheless, our eyes adjusted and our conversation continued. It was indeed unfortunate that we had to decide such a matter by voting. A participant uttered in despair "Perhaps we might someday sufficiently evolve as a group to have a consensus from awareness." I said consensus wasn’t our intent. Faye said we had agreed upon this experiment, as stated in the proposal, from the beginning. What was happening? Regarding the voting, I suspect that voting is the most uncreative action that can be occur in a dialogue. I was reading into this issue something deeper than meets the eye, yet what it was I didn’t have a clue. I suspect it was along the lines of a necessary ordering process, which I discuss below.

Quite often after a meeting the gossip, which backscatters between participants, is vibrantly antagonistic to the adversarial other. As the process of dialogue unfolds, the subject matter moves into another set of conversations among the participants who are often engaged in their own kind of tangles. Besides the intention to explore thought and its meaning, there is a synergetic development that affects the larger community, which ensues from the open ended facilitation that occurs in Bohmian dialogues. The difficult yet emerging process of renouncing the dominator/leader (which appears to be universal in the dialogue groups I surveyed) in each of us makes it possible for organic growth that is accomplished by the participants’ praxis. Bohm, who assumed that there was an orderly process in life, referred often to Michael Polanyi’s work of the tacit dimension. Polanyi’s work is placed in the context of other philosophers of consciousness by Eugene Webb in Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Riceour, Girard, Kierkegaard (1988). Perhaps Lincoln and Guba’s Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) will result in renewed interest in Michael Polanyi’s work.

I suggested that we drop the atmospheric talk and embark upon another conversation. We had been talking about integrated culture in Southeast Asia. Ken said there was a common cultural thread, and then he went into the hyphenation of scientific disciplines. Faye had talked about the current trend towards synthesis. At any rate, the three new people spoke about the group’s decision to turn out the lights. One of the newcomers said that she had problems with florescent lights.

Bard spoke about Buddha and meditation. Bard and Faye got into a rap about how quickly the Tibetans regrouped after China forced them to move to India. I brought up the Cherokee regrouping in Oklahoma -- The Trail of Tears -- and someone mentioned that the quarrels between the Arabs and the Jews as well as events in Bosnia were regional issues, which didn’t seem to affect us.

In what appeared to be an off-the-wall manner Ned grabbed Unfolding Meaning and started reading about Moses’ statement concerning the notion of the limited and the unlimited. He seemed to be trying to tell the group that thought is unlimited. This kind of experience would happen often in our group setting; with people doing seemingly

off-the-wall things to clarify the issue of what was "Bohmian" about dialogue.

As we started to wind down, there were the usual intervals of silence (that appear to be a summing up) which lead into the next set of articulations. As we closed, I said to the community "everyone is different." Ken said that thought wasn’t the issue; it was our actions that counted.

I reminded myself that every content has a form, and each form has several representations that are presented by the performer’s articulation. There seem to be a myriad of ways that anyone can respond to each statement. I felt anxious at times, with a pain that was mindful. The rationale of the group’s mandate to turn off the lights was still a puzzle to me.

I mentioned Bohm’s reference to the hunting and gathering tribes, who knew what to do when they were talking, who knew how much to say of what, when, why, etc.. Someone said Bohm had become a hero. I stated that this process of dialogue is self-corrective, and I was reminded of musician Pete Seeger’s statement that the cult of the folk hero runs through all threads of our American culture.

In 1992, the participants of the "Dialogue and the Implicate Order Seminar" at Schumacher college performed a play that satirized Bohm’s alleged charisma. David Garret, an artist, designed a poster handout for the performers that characterized Bohm with his arms over his head suggesting a meditative posture. In the play the group performed a parody of Bohm’s idolization by chanting repetitively "Bohm-Om". . . . Most people who have met David Bohm would assert that in his inquiry into ideas he was unassuming and low key. The Philosopher Renee Weber says that David Bohm represents the good component of Plato’s trilogy: truth, beauty, and the good. For another interpretation of Bohm’s view on the good life I recommend Ib Ravin’s dissertation "Implicate Order and The Good Life: Applying David Bohm’s Ontology In Human World" (1989).

Surprisingly many people in our group assumed that several people were dialoguing the way Bohm recommended, with no leader, agenda, or facilitator. Although I stated that I didn’t know the exact numbers, my suspicion is that a very small number are doing "Bohmian" dialogue. Mario Cayer, who interviewed dialoguers about this issue, told me that sixty percent stop coming after six months and the groups are very small in numbers. In a February 1998 telephone conversation, Cayer reported that in Quebec approximately ten people have been meeting for six years. In the Oregon group it appears that the wholeness or coherence which Bohm alludes to has manifested itself only briefly in the intervals of silence, and only on occasion while the group was talking. Of course this phenomenon is immeasurable, and I suspect that many participants have a similar realization, but they immediately lapse into the ordinary.

Meeting #24 January, 1995, 12 people

This community began its usual discursive and abstract discourse with the aim of teasing out some understanding between each other. Juanita asked what David Bohm meant when he said that thought is limited. Faye responded by talking about "straight" knowledge, the unknown, and the mystical. Johan said he didn’t feel comfortable with that word mystical.. Ken questioned Faye, asking if she knew "for sure" about straight knowledge. He talked about waking in the middle of the night quite convinced that he had this experience, and subsequently he turned out to be mistaken. Ned brought up the dwarf in the homunculus. Mark said that an important aspect of this inquiry is that meaning arises unknowingly. Daniel said that language, poetry, and dialogue is a flavor, suggesting there was a Marxist angle to this dialogue and that Bohm had been influenced by Hegel. I mentioned the For Truth Try Dialogue article where Bohm and his colleagues indicated that shared meaning has to encompass everyone. I said that such a process seems to be a tall order.

Bard talked about his "Buddha experience," the wars, the O. J. Simpson trial, the local panhandling ordinance, and the knocking down of inexpensive student housing. After a while someone turned on the light, and I said that I felt our lighting situation is symptomatic of something deeper. Ironically, the same person who had turned the light off turned it back on. During the last two meetings, sensitivity to the room lights has been a recurring issue.

Ken and Ned became verbally combative with each other, and it seemed that Ned was seeking a coherent way to approach our inquiry. The notion of suspension of views was brought up frequently. Faye said that it is a mix-match; sometimes there is cohesion and agreement, but often there is no agreement. She talked about the different terms people have and the various meanings that they give to each.

Typically there was a period of stillness where "consciousness" -- whatever it may be -- wanted to process events, and tell us where to go next. It seemed that the group as a whole did not want to delve further into issues until some previously hidden or glossed over issue was raised and put forth in the center of the circle, as it were, and dealt with. It seemed that this dialogue community occasionally moved into interesting meaning, yet one couldn’t say for sure.

We lapsed into a silence and I suggested that it was time to break up and go for tea or something.

Several times I tried to bring up the rationale of Yalom’s experience with group psychotherapy and Rossi’s research on ultradian rhythms regarding ninety minute limits, but the group as a whole seemed to want to stay the entire time allotted by our meeting arrangements.

Meeting #25 February, 1995, 10 people

Ken began with the topic of fear and meditation, but it seemed that the group strayed and never returned to his original statement. Each person said hello to a new guest who after seeing an ad for this meeting was curious enough to come. As discussed below, the events that took place at this particular meeting were quite intense.

When there are fewer participants, it is easier to observe the tendency of people to collude. If participants are using another as a scapegoat, this tendency appears more pronounced in a smaller dialogue group.

There was a rift between Ned and Ken, who refused to listen to each other. Ken said that Ned wouldn’t listen. They have both been in the group for a long time. Juanita spoke about her five-day experience in a dialogue-oriented event, her difficulties at this meeting, and how she was finally able to take it in stride. Mark talked about his inner dialogue when listening to everyone speaking; Bard talked about Buddhism and about the meaninglessness and lack of community that he experienced in Eugene. The new women asked a lot of questions, while Faye talked about her process of vigilance and progressing through thought to actual awareness.

Ned and Ken argued about what is real and what is ideal. Ned wanted us to be real. There was much conflict in this Dialogue meeting. Someone said that dialogue is a "conflicting inquiry," but I wondered whether this inquiry includes the notion that we can’t even agree on terms. For example, the term "consciousness" was bandied about; someone kept using the term "expanded consciousness," a term I had not heard in a long time. The word attention was used; then another participant talked about the difference between awareness and coherence. Johan brought up the notions of inquiry, curiosity, and what the group was thinking. It was interesting to me that Ken accused Ned of being unethical, and yet it could be construed that from the outset, Ken was pushing his own agenda as well. Ken picked a topic without asking anyone what they wanted to talk about . . . . It was due to his prompting that we introduced ourselves to the newcomer; this gesture could be interpreted as good manners, or merely being meddlesome. Ken went right to Ned’s jugular, so to speak, saying that he was the worst, and that he was incapable of listening to anyone. Then Juanita, who is a natural born facilitator, again brought up the notion of inquiry and curiosity about the rules. Reflecting on what to say about Ken’s desultory remarks, I quoted Tara Singh’s statement: "Nothing that is real can be threatened." I explained this as a statement from A Course in Miracles. The title of one of Barbara Marx Hubbard’s books, Our Crisis is a Birth is another way to express this idea.

In retrospect, I was implying that the difficulty between Ken and Ned could be an opportunity for them and the group to go deeper towards developing a mutual understanding. After this meeting, Ken never returned.

Overall, this meeting was quite odd; there were many things happening. Bard said that he came for a social life, and then suddenly someone threw into the group the notion that humans and dolphins were originally the same species. The notion of humans and dolphins as originally being the same was thrown out into the group.

I see the tendency of the smaller group colluding to avoid whatever issues appear that suggest avoidance! This process reveals a lack of clarity by people who are assuming they are indeed being clear. At the same time, participants try to go through their confusions to arrive at clarity, although there does not seem to be a way to do it. It is all "flotsam and jetsam," or so it appears.

In his quarrel with Ken, Ned’s final statement was an idiomatic riddle that suggested that Ken was at fault. His statement was quite poetic.

Meeting #26 February, 1995, 9 people

We were bounced from our regular meeting place because of a high school debate conference, but we worked out an alternative. Someone started talking about Juanita, and Mark said we should desist unless she was present. It was ironic to me that later in the dialogue Mark and Faye kept talking about Ned as if he were a culprit. Statements were made along the lines of, "I don’t think he really knows what he is talking about." Lark, who had not attended the previous two meetings, began speaking about the trend towards fundamentalism. He indicated that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is more acute in Europe than in the US. I talked about characteristics of the mystic as stated by William James in The Variety of Religious Experience. Lark said that the mystical experience is ineffable, it comes unbidden, it is transient, and one’s life is changed forever.

For a thorough view of Mysticism see Stace’s Philosophy and Mysticism (1960).

Mark said that Lark’s remarks didn’t tell him anything. Lark spoke about his experiences with the Unitarian church, his ecstatic experiences, and writing about meaning and being. Mark said, "you didn’t stay there long." I paid homage to author Gertrude Stein, whose writings were woven with craft and artistry even though she used

a small pallet of words.

Daniel had spoken earlier about his experiences as a graduate teaching fellow when he had the opportunity to teach about Bohm’s philosophy. He mentioned handing out to his students the William Keepin article about David Bohm in Revision: A Journal of Change and Consciousness. Ned spoke about our culture and the fact that not much had changed, while Faye argued that things were changing extremely fast. It seems ironic to me that people critical of other’s limits of expression also have their own limits--which in many respects parallel the ones that they are critical of. Each person has difficulty seeing his or her own nonnegotiable assumptions. Bard’s opinion on the Buddhist view of the self confused a few people; then he apologized for his lack of scholarship.

For an academic view on Buddhist scholarship see Steven Laycock’s Mind As Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind: Buddhist Reflections on Western Phenomenology (1994).

It seemed Bard was talking about the extreme of the self and no-self, as well as the Buddhist concept of the middle way. I asked why Meister Eckhart was considered so highly and there was no response! Lark talked about "units of subject and object," the old "observer and the observed" issue that physics has been kicking around since Descartes, (but especially during the last seventy years). Bard had read Nietzche when he was nineteen, and said that Nietzche had quite an ego. Someone talked about Krishnamurti’s response to a question (asked by a writer) on the subject of earning a living as a writer. Krishnamurti replied that it is not wise to earn a living by writing, but that one learns how to survive when sincerely attempting the task.

I suppose the implication of Krishnamurti’s response was that one must do what they love, regardless of consequences.

Meeting #27 March, 1995, 8 people

The meeting began with Daniel talking about meaning and metaphor. He was taking a university class which dealt with a cognitive science approach to metaphor, and he felt his peers would see Bohm’s experiment as not rigorous enough. Our Dialogue group would be seen by these people as a "lightweight" operation. There could be a principle of the whole that manifests itself at these meetings because our community seems to illuminate all the dark corners, so to speak -- all the glossed-over areas of our communication that we are missing. It was my turn to be taken to task for my style of communicating. I mentioned Stafford Beer’s proposal on a syntegrity team workshop, modeled from the icosahedron. In Beer’s scheme there are thirty people who talk and try to resolve planetary issues. I said that Beer and his colleagues were using a lot of rigor as well as imagination. Mark interjected, "That’s what irritates me about you. You bring up these terms, but don’t define them." Daniel tried to defend me, and I came back with more information, which was construed by Mark as name dropping. Mark mentioned his class in logic at Kings College where they discussed the notion that when one "appeals to authority" it is usually the sign of a flawed argument. I interpreted this to mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Continuing with my articulation of Beer’s work, I used the term "iteration," and talked about the symmetry and asymmetry of geometry and the efficiency and phase transformations of the icosahedron. Continuing my quest to describe Beer’s philosophy of the icosahedron I stated, "The icosahedron doesn’t stay stable; it is like an electron, and there is a book called The Enigmatic Electron. Why do you suppose Beer picked the icosahedron as the unit for discourse to resolve planetary problems, or at least as tool for us to educate each other about such planetary issues?"

After Mark’s critique of my mode of communication, Daniel used the phrase "action at a distance," and I said something about Bell’s theorem. Johan defended me on the subject of quoting authorities, and said that it was certainly acceptable to quote an authority such as Gregory Bateson. This dialogue community moved on to Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Daniel said that in a way we were all anomalies to each other. Like part of a puzzle, each says what he or she thinks, from their own experience. Following along the typical approach of this group’s fixation on point-counterpoint -- which potentially can result in a receptivity to other views -- I responded to Mark’s critique by telling him that he played his neutral role similar to the character played by Paul Neuman in the movie Cool Hand Luke. I used Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano to make the point that our culture is repressed. Mark had studied rhetoric and again said that name dropping didn’t make it with him . . . . I said, "OK let’s go into it . . . ."

The writer John Briggs, who participated in a dialogue group with David Shainberg (See TheTransformative Self [1973]), said that in his group he assumed that his articulations were being ignored. Yet, later in the process many of the themes developed among the participants were along the lines of Briggs’s thinking. I have found this to be a similar experience in the Oregon group: especially the realization that most assumptions thwart learning. Briggs said his experience of dialogue motivated him to get involved in small town politics, whereas I have not yet been motivated to become socially involved. If I notice any change it is that I can better accept my limitations with less judgment than in the past.

The group took up the subject of how discourse becomes compressed due to time limitations and the presence of other people. Robbin said something or other and then Mark remarked that things were incoherent. Obviously each of us has a different world view and a different way of perceiving. I returned again to a discussion on graph theory, which is another part of Stafford Beer’s approach. In brief, graph theory is used by Beer to discover principles that are non-hierarchal and aspire to the ideals of participatory democracy. One of the aims of this theory is to understand how people construct reality in the decision making process. As I understand it, the psychologist George Kelly developed a significant amount of its rationale.

In retrospect, I found it curious that Mark put me on the rack for name dropping and because my representations were an "appeal to authority." "Yet, this meeting began by referring to the authority of experts at the university who are teaching classes on metaphor with cognitive underpinnings.

Meeting #28, March, 1995, 6 people

Although this meeting did not have the numbers, it was quite interesting. Juanita spoke about the intent in a query she handed out regarding her efforts to make dialogue more interesting. Johan talked about physicist Richard Feynmen’s theories on the subject of "cargo baggage," and how statistics can be used both erroneously and in ways designed to mislead. The atmospheric flavor was reminiscent of our meetings six months ago when many people stopped attending. Ned talked about the need to keep a shared space open for people. Juanita is currently involved with a community organization. Daniel talked about language theory, and particularly about the postmodern view that after a while language and meaning diverge. He contended that the Romantics elevated language to an appreciation of beauty.

Participants generally talked about extending the dialogue group once I left (in May of 1995), recounted the past, and rememberedthe fact that the group split up once before (e. g. , at the twelfth meeting). Yet this group carried on in a sustained basis. Although the promise of what might have happened if the group was larger was not met, it was a good beginning.

Several people talked about what kind of dialogue MIT was setting up in Corporate organizations. Although they use "Bohmian dialogue" as a template, apparently Peter Senge and his colleague Bill Isaacs do not see that they are dialoguing in a different manner than David Bohm intended. As I have stated earlier, Bohm’s dialogue proposal aimed for a grass roots movement, with as little facilitation as possible. Bohm considered Senge’s approach to dialogue to be what he called a limited dialogue. Mary Tulin’s dissertation is "As We Talk, So We Organize: A Study of the Tacit Processes and Structures of Talk in an Organizational Dialogue" (1996). I found that Tulin did an admirable job with representing a dialogue between union workers and management at a steel plant. Especially insightful was her representation of the intersubjective approach of Austrian-American sociologist Alfred Schutz, who founded phenomenological sociology, which studies how people interact and interpret their everyday life. Social construction and ethnomethodology are important off-shoots of Scutz’s lifework.

In The first 100 years of M Bakhtin (1998), Caryl Emerson mentions that Schutz is of the I-Thou-We school of thought which includes Jaspers and Bakhtin. Tulin’s use of Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology reveals the significance of language and meaning that emerges between the workers and management of the steel plant.

A few statements by Tulin and her mentor William Isaacs still remain unclear to me.

The "push" Isaacs lends to Bohm’s notion is from activity to product -- a causal assumption that ‘these kinds of inquiry produce these kinds of results’. Both Bohm and Isaacs assume a benign, creative reality awaiting discovery by practitioners of dialogue; Isaacs refined the description of its visible effects. . . . The irony of trying to "will dialogue into being," or "make dialogue actionable" -- such as in taking it into organizational settings -- is not lost on Isaacs, who calls it a paradox that is "ultimately resolved through either experience or practice." Most resolve the tension by either promoting "technical processes of conversation or inquiry skills" -- which sells well in practical settings -- or the "ineffable qualities of dialogue" (Isaacs, 1995:7), which tend to be disassociated from ‘bringing about intended consequences’ (Cayer, 1993). (32-33)

It is not clear to me that Issaac’s organizational use of Bohmian dialogue is a paradox. Perhaps there is a contradiction in his rationale.

In Peat’s biography Infinite Potential: The Life and Times Of David Bohm (1997), Lee Nichol, one of Bohm’s colleagues, comments on Bohm’s view of contradiction and paradox.

A contradiction involves two things that cannot fit together, while a paradox which appears at first sight to be a contradiction, on closer examination has a resolution. (273)

A quote by Isaacs stated above regarding the bringing of dialogue into organizational settings seems to be a paradox. Perhaps what Isaacs is proposing is indeed a contradiction, at least as Bohm defined the term to Nichol (cited above); I argue below that it appears to be a contradiction. Isaacs also says that in any "mature artistic practice both are required, one without the other will fail." (1995:7) (33). I concur with Isaac’s contention that we need a mature artistic practice, but I doubt that the approach of Isaacs and his colleague Danah Zohar, who is mentioned below, will generate an artistic maturity that David Bohm et. al. contended could lead to a coherent wholeness.

Danah Zohar says in Rewiring the Corporate Brain Using the New Science to Rethink How We Structure and Lead Organizations (1997):

Dialogue group practitioners differ (as they should!) about the nature of the dialogue conversation. Some, following the tradition of Chris Argyris and "Action Science," think that the conversation should be goal directed, aimed at solving specific problems. Critics say this is too mechanistic. Others prefer a completely open and nondirected conversation, letting whatever comes to mind emerge. Personally, I usually use a both-and approach, setting some vague theme but letting the conversation run wildly. (142)

The action scientist Chris Argyris, who has researched participants in corporate organizational settings, contends that when the crunch comes they revert to past conditionings. For further elaboration see Mario Cayer on Argyris (cited below), or Danah Zohar’s Rewiring . . . (cited above). Chris Argyris’s relevant article is "Good Communications That Blocks Learning," Harvard Business Review (1994).

Don Factor wrote to me that Danah Zohar once told him that she would never personally participate in the face-to-face dialogue known as a "Bohmian dialogue." In her book (cited above) Zohar states that she favors a "both-and approach" to dialogue. Apparently Zohar means that she prefers a facilitator. I see this as distinctly different from participating in a dialogue group in a grass roots manner. Also, in my personal exchange with Don Factor, he indicated that other than attending the meeting in the English countryside, Bill Isaacs has not participated in a non-facilitated dialogue group in a sustained manner at the grass roots level. Perhaps Isaacs and Zohar have been busy with their commitments to the various organizations with which they are engaged. When Zohar says she is for both approaches, maybe this means that her work will eventually include her participation in true "Bohmian" dialogue. As I see it, one could conceivably dialogue both ways, but I feel the value in doing so requires that the dialogue groups be kept separate. For an eloquent elaboration on this issue of distinctions between these different approaches see Cayer’s "Bohm’s Dialogue And Action Science: Two Different Approaches" (1997).

In 1997 I spoke by telephone to Mario Cayer (he was in Quebec), whom I met at the "Dialogue and the Implicate Order Seminar" at Schumacher College in 1992. He had just finished his dissertation "An Inquiry into the Experience of Bohm’s Dialogue" (Saybrook Institute, 1996). Cayer interviewed various participants who had been practicing the proposal espoused by Bohm and his colleagues. Cayer asked the participants some very interesting questions, and separated the reasons people dialogue into five different categories: conversation, inquiry, participative process, collective meditation, and creation of shared meaning.

I contend that maturity in dialogue emerges with praxis, and sustaining the dialogue meetings is necessary for such a maturity to a coherent wholeness. In my inquiries into the various "Bohmian" groups that have been established internationally, I have learned that sustaining dialogue with a significant number of people has been quite difficult. Bohm often said that a theory, in order to show promise, must progress through an incubation period. In my research I have not seen any evidence that Issaacs or Zohar actually have participated in a dialogue group at a grass roots level as Bohm and colleagues have proposed.

It is my understanding that Bill Isaacs and Peter Senge trained facilitators using some of Bohm’s inspiring ideas. The jury is still out on whether or not any independent dialogues have emerged from their training classes at universities or with their clients in the business world. In a personal communication, Don Factor -- who worked with Bohm on ironing out the bugs of dialogue -- conveyed to me de Mare’s view of their work: "By the way, de Mare shared something of this view. He said to me one evening with a sly giggle, ‘You know dialogue is very subversive.’ I, too, took this view, figuring that Bill Isaacs and all the other professionals would (unwittingly) open the door for the forces of chaos and complexity to enter into the systems and, like one of Prigogene’s dissipative systems, shake things up and bring about some kind of cleansing. But so far, this doesn’t seem to have occurred." (08.29 PM 8/10/94 email from Donald Factor)

De Mare writes in Koinonia that one of his Greek friends claims that the ancient Greeks discoursed in groups of fifty or more. I suspect that in our time Bohmian dialogue at the grass roots will take a form more along the lines of a median group of ten to twenty people.

At this meeting (#28) the dialogue community seemed to agree on several issues; it was interesting to see how the group flowed "as one mind." Perhaps "one mind" is an idea that merits further study. We were convivial, and wondered why we had not caught on in the community-at-large. Different members of the group inquired into ways we might attract other participants. I was grateful that people wanted to extend the experiment.

Meeting #29 April, 1995, 5 people

Faye attended with her daughter, who was a sansei from Calgary, Canada. After organizational logistics were clarified, we talked about the sublime and profane in the usual "flotsam and jetsam" manner. During the meeting, Faye’s daughter Mita said, "so this is dialogue," and the group as a whole laughed.

Meeting #30 April, 1995, 8 people

We talked about the education of children. Johan observed that Bohm reiterated what the Buddha said centuries ago, namely that there is an underlying unity in universe. I said "apparently what he said didn’t catch on."

In retrospect, I was grateful that people had given this difficult experiment a try. It seems that the way I was affected in these by-weekly meetings was a lot more subtle than I initially realized. My guess is that some of the others came to this conclusion as well..

The fact that this dialogue group has survived for five years could mean that they have so much ego invested they would rather die than let go, or it could mean that some kind of profound learning has occurred. No doubt it would depend on who you talked to and their mood.

It seems Faye, the mystic, and Daniel, the rationalist, are still furiously dialoguing. In a dinner conversation with Faye, she admitted to be working on Daniel. When he puts his foot in his mouth (by saying something that Faye construes as too intellectual, and too academically rational) she reminds him and the group of what in her view dialogue is supposed to be about.

Although there is no strict uniformity yet, there has been a consensus to continue the meetings.

Second Seminar on Dialogue with Saral Bohm, May, 1995 Ojai, California

This second seminar with Saral Bohm, who, as I said earlier, has been carrying on the work of her husband David, was similar in many respects to last year’s. Yet participating in a large group is deceptive. Whereas one might assume that it is more difficult to communicate with 44 people, I found it easier to get involved with the ensuing discourse. There were various Native Americans at this seminar, and many of them had a great respect for Bohm. With their participation my experience of dialogue was very different, compared with my experiences in Eugene. These people seemed to be tuned into the center of the circle, and their attention spans appeared to be beyond the typical personality conflicts I had experienced in the Eugene group. Their personalities were demonstrated by the sense of humor they exhibited over the most ordinary statements.

I remember someone remarking that there was a lot of turmoil, and I retorted, "Ya, you mean the terms of oil." I meant power of the oil cartels, and Sun Bear instantly picked up on my little joke, and started laughing in a way that immediately loosened up the meeting.

Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti