In retrospect, I have come to the realization that my purpose for deciding to interview people personally arose out of my feeling that without this vital personal component my paper on Bohm’s holistic approach would become less than holistic. Inadvertently, my personal action offset the intent of koinonia in the dialogue sessions. Patrick de Mare believed that Koinonia’s intent was an impersonal fellowship which would lead to the cosmological dimension of Bohmian dialogue. As I see it, the western world has lost its sense of the coherence of the group mind, which is what I suspect Owen Barfield, Bakhtin, Bateson, Berman, Bohm et. al. believed. When I set out to do this interview, I thought that such a personal rapport would result in dialogue yielding insight, and perhaps revelation. The interview below demonstrates the complexity of Bohmian dialogue. Since this was the first time I have ever interviewed someone, I take full responsibility for any question that may miss the mark (harmatia). Earlier in this essay, I mentioned the circumstances surrounding my choice of the interviewee -- a person who died subsequent to the Eugene dialogues. I think that one participant’s "take" can give the reader a sense of a "static snapshot of a kinetic movement" -- e. g., consciousness. This aspect is represented through the many possible interpretations of the interviewee’s interviewee’s constructions.

I. What are your most recent impressions of the dialogue meetings.

P: Well, if you want to look at a personal interpretation . . .

I: Yeah, a personal interpretation is fine.

P: When I first, several months ago, got into dialogue -- about six months or so ago -- I treated the dialogue rather differently than the way I’ve been treating it in the last months. And my attitude at that time was that I would point to something interesting to see in the dialogue no matter what happened. So, I wasn’t at all concerned with the way the dialogue was going, what the issue was that was being discussed, or any of that sort of thing. I was treating it as a kind of meditative practice for myself [to see me in whatever was going on in my mind, and as an exercise in keeping my attention focused to what was some aspect that was interesting to me. So, it necessarily generally wasn’t the topic, the content of what was being said, but the way it was specifically said, the particular interactions. And in the last few months it’s partly been a change in me, and it’s partly that I find it harder to do that -- find it harder to find my own habits of listening and so on that become dulling perhaps. So I found it much harder that I tried to see something new -- but I think also the dialogue had fallen into recognizable routine patterns. You know, and that has been a source of -- well, in one sense I can’t say frustration, I don’t think I was really getting frustrated with it, although I had -- well, certainly I expressed frustration in an attempt to shift the -- to make things change.

I: Yeah.

P: Um, and I was thinking about it that way for awhile that perhaps, you know, evidently just sitting back and watching things happen, it seemed like it needed a change, it seemed like it fell into a rut. Therefore, perhaps to -- the next step was to actively attempt to change something -- you know, how can we do this differently? And to disturb the dialogue in a way.

I: So you had an intentional, like a choreography.

P: But more recently again I’ve come back to realizing well that doesn’t work either so -- you know I mean I -- it seems like I’m stuck in the same pattern that I’m seeing in everybody else, and it seems like other people are seeing that as well. So there is, currently, there is I think a general perception that we are -- we have become stuck in very repetitive patterns.. There’s a certain amount of frustration I have about what we’ve been doing.

I: Daniel talked to a couple of other people, one person says (Daniel I called him in my writings) that the dialogue has become Gemutlich -- Not enough people, not enough diversity. And Faye who I talked to recently tells me that the only reason people go is because they’ve got too much invested in their pride is on the line, so to speak. From what I can gather from reading these dialogue newsletters, you know, I personally have been doing a dialogue e-mail for the last five months, and it’s being sent to me by pigeon mail if you’d like to look at it, and it’s very different in this respect: the body’s not there. But it still has the same contentions, you know, the polarization’s -- the man versus the woman or the mystic versus the rationalist or whatever. So as you see it now, do you have any perspective about David Bohm’s proposal? Are you a bit more critical of his analysis? Is it a poor analysis, a good beginning, or could be improved upon? For example, his perspective of a collective proprioception working together to gain insight, to go deeper.

P: Um, this sounds like a very good idea. There’s something that struck me as having a great deal of potential, when I first started the dialogue. And I still think that it probably does have great potential, but I don’t see it really happening in that way. Um, and -- you know, I’m not sure because I feel like the experience of this particular group is perhaps a little peculiar. You know, I feel, I think we’re -- this dialogue group had a very sort of anarchistic development. You know, that is there was -- it seems like it was a bunch of people coming together to basically -- there was just this chaotic pattern of interactions which was supposed to develop into something -- I don’t know. But since each person had a lot of different ideas about what we were trying to do, and I think we still do, I think there has been no consensus on what sort of the underlying point -- OK, the thing is that I sort of -- I’m interested in this notion of inquiry into what we have in common, which means thought, inquiring into thought. But I don’t think other people see it that way.

I: Do you feel you can talk about what you’re sense of what there interpretation is -- one or two other interpretations, for example.

P: Well --

I: You’re talking about right now, right, the last so many months? You’re not talking about the original --

P: No. The original thing I’m not sure that there was --

I: You know, Axel.

P: Well, in a way, things haven’t changed that much, in that -- Well, there are some people who -- Well, I don’t know, I think -- OK, I think maybe what -- How do I put this? I mean, I think, I guess the truth is I really am not sure what is going on. I think that if one were to throw out the idea -- look, do we all agree that there is an underlying intention in this dialogue for us to inquire together into the nature of what -- the nature of thought. First of all, I’m not sure that everyone would agree. Secondly, I’m not sure that everyone who agreed would mean the same thing by their agreement. So, for example, when I try to talk to one person about this I get the impression from her response that she is not understanding the words in the same ways I am at all. You know, so she continually brings the way of speaking about things into a particular framework in which she has a great deal invested, and there’s a lack of -- I mean, from my perspective -- there’s a lack of willingness to talk about the world in other people’s terms, in terms which other people can feel.

I: You mean everybody’s talking from their own self-centered point of view?

P: No I’m not trying to -- there’s one person who I see that in. I mean, I think that -- I notice different things in different people, this being sort of their tribal features, if you like. There’s another person who -- his approach is almost chaotic -- I mean, there’s no -- I can’t say what his viewpoint is because he doesn’t, you know, he sort of deliberately doesn’t seem to have one -- or at least -- which is a bit --

I: But does he sound like he’s got the formula down, I mean, David Bohm’s?

P: No. No.

I: Does he pretend to?

P: Well, he thinks he does. I mean, he says he does.

I: That’s what I’m asking. Does he parrot --

P Yeah, at times, but --

I: parrot ah David Bohm’s?

P: Right, right. Well, I mean this is something which happens in many people. That is "Well, Bohm says this, or Bohm says not to do this or do that." But, when someone does that, I hear that and I say, "That isn’t my understanding of Bohm at all. You people like appealing to Bohm’s authority, or expressing points of view which I don’t see at all, so there’s obviously a difference in interpretation. And since -- I’m not particularly interested in turning this into an interpretation of Bohm words, you know, I don’t think that’s the point at all. You know, I’m not interested in discussing and debating whether they have the right interpretation. You know, I think that would be a waste of time. But I don’t know what to do with that sometimes. It gets to the point that I listen to this and I’m sort of stuck. Where do we go from here? I mean, it seems like there is such -- what this person is doing is so far away from what I would consider to be sort of self-conscious observation of the process of thought in action. I mean, I guess I have this bias that what makes dialogue and not -- what the essence of dialogue is that it’s self-reflective. That doesn’t necessary mean that we have to be talking about dialogue a good deal of the time, but we need to be paying attention to the process of what is going on, even if the content is somewhere else.

I: Yeah. That’s why we meet, that is the rationale for meeting once every week or every other week, so that you take it out in your own personal interactions in daily living. Isn’t that the rationale? So that you can reflect what goes on in the group with your daily living challenges?.

P: OK. OK. I agree, but what I’m saying is that -- if that reflection doesn’t occur at the time.

I: At the time. When ever it comes up.

P: If we’re not -- I mean, I guess what I’m interested in is paying attention to what comes up at the time O K. and sort of asking the question perhaps not explicate we don’t need to talking about this but looking at what is going on. As opposed to what happens in a coffee house discussion like a salon where you get engrossed in the issue at hand. O. K. and you forget to ask what is this process that is causing us to be so passionate or however we are.

I: Now if your doing it and someone else isn’t that is paying attention to that issue. Isn’t it in a way setting it on course for possibilities of insight? When the resistance or the non listening, or whatever comes up. is it that we all end up being neutralized by the evasiveness or escaping from the issue?

P: O K. What I am describing right now What I see as being sort of the causes of the particular patterns that are occurring.

I: In the last three to six months?

P: And I include my sort of focus on the process just as much as causing problems one that has been fairly constant and one that has generated some fairly repetitive contributions and what not! I said the same thing several times. O. K.

I: There seems to be a trend in the way we have been dealing with this stuff. There is variation and repetition different ways of saying the same thing too! Fresh ways Which I am sure you do.

P: That’s true.

I: When I was attending the most recent dialogue meeting. You did a very good job.

Although that is not the purpose of dialogue is the unfortunate thing, to be a Dutch Uncle and to set people straight. They should be able to see that for themselves,

and get on with it.

P Right.

I: Do you feel on this question of time when these issues come up in the group within the ninety minutes, or whatever it is, that if we did indeed go together and catch it, even if it was just a glimpse of it, could be an enhancing understanding of this question of understanding of interpretation. That our interpretations are limited? Usually interpretations are thrown up as a defense aren’t they? Or a probing, I am just feeling my here, to see if we can go into some of these things that come up in the process of a dialogue meeting. Process seems to me what is guiding the group and of course content has some value whatever topic does or does not come up right. It is sort of a bell curve spectrum of topics that come up Right. Do you feel that if we just had a glimpse of patterns between people there might be a collective insight

P: Sure I see that as being of value. When we see those patterns that is what we are learning from the dialogue. Everything that comes up. the details of the content these are generally things that come up elsewhere. These are not new, but the things that we notice in dialogue that we tend not to notice elsewhere That is where the value lies and I guess we are seeing these patterns . . . OK. We see these patterns of conflict of repetitive patterns. OK this person has a tendency to this, and I have a tendency to that.. Having seen those patterns it seems that for the process to go anywhere that seeing of the patterns needs to change the patterns. And I think there is a frustration that has to do with t observation I think! That these patterns are not really changing, or they do not appear to be changing in any constructive way in any way, which is going anywhere. So I think there is a sense that we are up against a point where we, at least I can’t speak for everyone else, but I have a sense of other people feeling something similar. I have a sense that we don’t know where to go from here. We have come to a point where we had something about previous illusions or ideas of what might happen, and perhaps those have become unveiled. Perhaps, we don’t hold to those illusion in the way we did in the past. And faced with the reality of that, whatever we thought, whatever great things might have come out of this. In other words we might have sensed that earlier on.. This is not happening now.

I: What could have been some of those possibilities that can come out of people listening together? I s there any way to describe that or is in an intuition?

P: I am thinking that one of the things that used to come up in different ways for different people. Is this notion of there being something about a shared consciousness that would be somehow an entirely unique experience, and a radically new experience and certainly it definitely would experience the sort of dialogue which we knew. But now we are coming to realize that there isn’t any sense of everybody being together ; that any sense of there being a group shared consciousness which is somehow greater or taking us out or our normal self centered-ness was always something of an illusion. This is something that we were trying to construct for ourselves, and to the extent that there was something there everybody was seeing it differently.

I: Well as you know I came to this because I was involved with Krishnamurti, and I heard about this earlier on and to some extent I was a true believer to go into it to the extent extern that I did. Now I am curious about some of the flavor. Do you have enough of a memory to give me an example of some of the experiments that would be run between different people. Was three a specific, like a tack that someone took, or a subtle approach or glossing over of other people views by a collusion between members in the group. I remember distinctly examples that I could give, but I was wondering if you had any or did you run different formulas or every single meeting there would be a different kind of intuitive in the moment approach to this experience of dialogue as the issues came up.

P: I don think I ever run what we would call an experiment in the sense that I had a plan o k lets try this and see what happens.

I: But you had an artistic sensitivity right. in your approach

P: Right. My approach was always one of listening and trying to see what was going on in the group. O K. What I got out of dialogue at first, and obviously I still do to some extent, this is what sort of keeps me interested in dialogue, is the appearance of insight that is here is an inspiration. If I listen, I see something different, that I don’t normally see in that situation and; it seems important to link something of general importance to social direction. I think the process of waiting for watching, and then letting that insight seeing what I can do with that insight in terms of how that then effects my contribution to the dialogue.

I: When you say insight this is something that can carry, whatever it may mean, you can be carry it with you in daily living. When you leave that dialogue group, or is it just the process of the conflict and phases of the interactions between people in the dialogue group. Insight being only in the sense of that meeting place where we meet regularly

P: Ya. Right now I am thinking of it in a limited sense. Thinking if it in terms of the immediate effect of approaching dialogue in a certain way of listening. O K. the idea of being without an agenda the point of that is to listen openly.. I come into listening without any idea about what I want to do, or any idea of about what I want to say. I watch to see. I guess I ask coming in with the attitude what is this person doing what are these people doing. So If that is an agenda well! The point about that is that it generates something new in every moment and the effect depends on what other people do. This is a way of approaching it which quarantines that the effect that I get will be new providing that there is something new going on out there.

I: When you say something new do you mean out there with the other people in that meeting place of lets say ninety minutes

P: Right

P: . What do you feel about when we break for tea to chat . Do you feel that it is a recapitulation or is just a phase out

P: What do you mean when you say break for tea?

I: Well generally that I have found that some of the people that come to the meeting really value the down time after for a social life

P: Lately we haven’t been doing that so much.

I: Well O K. When I attended the seminar last year in Ojai with Saral Bohm who played the role of the embodied facilitator it so happened that there were Native American Indians in the group. It was fascinating to participate with these Natives, and this business of being into the center of the dialogue, I could sense the implication of their participation this so strongly. I had shared with the participants the experience of the Eugene dialogue group. These people are supposed to be the liturgy of, who is who in the Bohmian dialogue and they said that what comes up should come up in the context of the group. That you can’t smooth it out by personalizing with other participants after meetings -- That is the impersonal fellowship argument has meaning. It is not exclusive of meeting outside, but to think that one is going to be able to use conflict resolution to grok what is going on in these meetings is questionable. There is obviously is some value to this Eugene dialogue meeting. It has been going on for two years. I am curious do you think that statements that people are not leaving, because they have to much pride invested, is only someone’s interpretation.

P: I don’t think the statement is accurate.

I: We could say that people in a heart felt way feel that there is something significant in this experience of dialogue and that it could conceivably contribute to ordinary issues like the conflict in the world or the strife between people

P: I wouldn’t go that far.

I: You wouldn’t go that far O K

P: Perhaps there is an element of force of habit. But I don’t think that is the case. I think that the people who are still going have found a way to use the dialogue which is invigorating personally and liberating. I think that the key to me and probably to a varying extent that the main thing which keeps people coming, is that we have all found a way to listen to each other in a way which is personally inspiring, and in a way which does not bore us. So what’s special about that might be different for different people

I: I am wondering where the dialogue group might go it seems to be caught in a lock in pattern that there is a predictability from what I am understanding of what has been happening. There is not a new development. in the dialogue or the feel of it.

Obviously because there is too few people. Right. or is it not as simple as that ? Do you think that if you had twenty people meeting for two years that we would have a dynamic meeting going, or is there no way of knowing?

P: It seems that in principle that the lack of number should not prevent change from happening because what we are relying on at this point is that we change and that the dialogue changes us, and if it is going to have any value that is the theory behind it. the process of doing the dialogue changes us then if it changes, the process of dialogue should change as we change, and that should not depend on how many people. There is a difference obviously and with more people there is a more of a sense that one is tackling issues of social dimensional orientations. Perhaps we are not doing that being a small group. Although, despite the fact that their is only a half dozen to a dozen people coming to this group. When I look the people are quite different in many ways there is variety, yet there is a sameness, and there is some aspects which is similar I don’t know? I am sort of thinking that here is something which would cause, or enable a person to stick with a dialogue group for an extended period of time. Because I don’t think -- I guess my pessimism about certain aspects of the Bohmian dialogue vision is largely a social vision. Well, I feel like realistically when we look at the people who stick with it we all have something in common. We all have a certain dissatisfaction. We all have perhaps a certain lack of fullness in our lives -- I mean you know we have time to do this -- And I wonder if the people that we need to really reach -- don’t experience themselves as having time to do this

I: There is the view that the contemplative life does reach out to everyone

The mystics and different poets say this, for example, Meister Eckhart. I understand what you are saying.

P: But it doesn’t appear to be.

I: What can we do about that issue?

I: My second core asked me about this -- what does Wholeness have to do with the haves and the have nots?, right. And the only thing I can think of answering this is that perhaps in the long run people that live with integrity in their own personal life might be effective.

P: . . . Dialogue by it’s kind of format nature is something which is only going to reach very few people, so this idea of it being a vehicle broad scale social change just doesn’t really seem to be realistic at all. As a contribution to a meditative technology, I think this is really important to the views of Krishnamurti and Bohm -- you know, I think that there’s clearly a value there. And there are various directions from which one could see it going. One thing that we could think of is in terms of this notion that the really important effect in dialogue is what’s in between sessions and the way in which it influences our lives and the way we relate to people. If it really had a major effect on the way in which our interactions with others -- between dialogues -- then one could see that, OK, it could potentially have ameliorative effect. even if only a small number of people were attending these meetings. I guess I wonder how big this effect is in our behavior.

I: Well that issue of the lag effect in Bohm.

P: I mean, what happens between -- how does what we learn in the experience of dialogue effect everyday interactions between people not connected to a dialogue group.

I: And do you feel that -- how would you respond to that?

P: Well, you see I’m not sure. I don’t know.

I: You haven’t noticed any significant --

P: Well, I think there is --

I: -- change in your life.

P: It’s hard, you see, it’ s very hard to say because the way in which I experience the dialogue is so wound up in what I’m doing in my life at the time anyway, so I find it hard to say what’s the cause and what’s the effect when in fact I tend to think of it in terms of co-dependent arising.

I: Well, if you state something along the lines that you are at a heightened awareness and you’re involved in more community projects where you had not been too involved, or at least you pay attention to issues more than not, or some kind of internalized change that has nothing to do with the focus of this group other than a feeling. I guess it’s . . . how do you look at it? Is it a heuristic devise. Um, devised constructs that you self-create that’s, at least as they may or may not be true, supposed to be the rationale for this dialogue, I mean that we go out and find something to do in the world of violence and hatred. My feeling is that this question you brought up earlier of -- we checked out or we don’t go in together listening, or if we do it’s a shocking thing almost, it’ s an unknown, it’s in the unknown area, whatever that might mean. The complex tension I see between the group and the individual in that setting is that your trapped in that group, if you will, even if you are doing your part. Let’s say there are several people doing their part and it just takes one asshole gumming up the works. Over and over again I notice when I read these newsletters that they talk about the disruptiveness of somebody coming in or -- whether they’re new people or regulars -- this always seems to be the asshole, if I can use that language -- someone who dominates the conversation or is trying to ruffle people’s feathers with hooks and curves to throw them off, without the possibility of a coherence. The limits of where I’m at with this dialogue is that it’s just frustrated the classic retort that it’s a frustrating experience.

P: Well, okay, this is -- Sort of the theory behind this is that if we’re all doing our job then that is a problem which is itself solved, that if we experience some particular person who’s being disruptive, then we bring them back to the discussion. If that person is at all sensitive to what other people are saying, then that will modify their behavior. My experience actually is that has actually happened. It’s something which happens slowly, and it’ s a change which sometimes goes forwards and backwards in a discontinues manner. But overall it seems to me that there were certain kinds of disruptions which were very extreme, and have in fact been modified through, basically through them coming up with some sort of influence in the discussion. Now, if the source of disruption is an equal sort -- if you constantly have new people coming in and disrupting it -- then you have to live with this experience. And I think that a dialogue -- OK this is one of the things about this question of should a dialogue be open or closed? It seems to me that if you keep a dialogue open and you regularly have new people coming in, then those new people will create a -- well, I can’t say that this really happens. What our experience has been is that we have new people come to the dialogue but they don’t stay, and my conclusion, my sense of the reason why they don’t stay, is because we’ve already got this group affair --

I: Yes, that’s been stated.

P: And so --

I: And they can sense it.

P: Right.

I: And it scares them away.

P: Basically yeah.

P: We’ve developed sort of a --

I: Yeah, we’ve developed an in-group.

Unconscious so to speak, right. A convoluted situation.

So the only way to bring new people in would be if we started a new meeting to get a lot of new people in --

I: Change the format. Or start from scratch literally.

P: That’s exactly what I’m saying.

I: Yes. Is that possible.

P: Yeah, I think that is possible, and this has come up especially because most people don’t seem to want to do that. And uh -- there is the alternative point of view is: Well, OK we have this group now, it’s questionably a little bit on the small size. I don’t know whether that’s necessarily the case, but in a way it seems that two people talking is enough. If we were sort of determined to make this group, if we were turning to see what we could do to with what is available to us we could -- in fact with a small group it’s easier to decide to change the format in a certain way. You know, there are the things which are coming up essentially: how can we change the dialogue in a way which keeps the basic intent but perhaps will bring something new into it.

I: My understanding is that it’s word of mouth. I used to advertise.

P: Right, yeah. OK we’re . . . right now I’m talking about keeping the dialogue moving without -- OK. Let’s say my sense is that we’re not going to be able to increase the numbers. If we wanted to experiment with getting a whole bunch of new people, we would need to restart the dialogue and just replace the meeting place the current place of the meeting’s too small. So we need to find another place to be, and EWEB they don’t, they won’t do that anymore.

I: Is that right.

P: Well, that was before and now it’s like they’re Popular.

I: Well, they’ve made a mistake with us. They didn’t realized they had given us a year.

P: Right. And then what you’d have to do is advertise.

I: Well, when I look back I don’t --

P: One would have to do pretty much what you did to launch the group.

I: Although this is not significant to where I’d like to go with asking your perspectives. In passing, the reason I launched it is that as I was passing through to Seattle when I had matriculated in this school program looking back many people offered to help me initiate this project it always was a group effort even though it was a small bunch of people, an earlier on their lives changed so they had to go out and go there own way So maybe it’s going the way it’s supposed to go, as far as David Bohm’s vision of maybe one group meeting over time going deeper that seems to be an open question. And also if we look back historically, tribes had vested interests for meeting in a circle, you could argue. And quite often they were of a homogeneous form out of necessity.

I: . . . on the West Coast especially can be microcosm of Humanity. The West Coast is in general a very diverse people. East has met West. Now what I’m wondering -- the question of language. Do you feel that language has improved between people, their thinking processes are rendered in an articulate manner, or do you think that we’re still feeling and stumbling around. What I’m asking is do you think that language, the quality of language reflects insight, or points toward directions that indicates listening skills at least?

P: I get no indications that various people’s listening skills have improved. But that’s chiefly silence rather than language.. I mean, it would be very hard to judge whether people’s abilities to communicate generally have improved. I would doubt that. I think that where the communication may have improved is that as we’ve become used to language, we then can use language. the misunderstandings that arose in the past no longer arise So I don’t think this is one of things that happens in a short period of time. But you get used to the language of the group so you understand them in their terms to a certain extent. If your open to it, and I think most of us are. There’s a question in one case where this still arises, but not so much lately because there has been a certain amount intolerance show by the rest of the group, and the rest of us kind of stop these two and continue to interact in what seems to be a very negative way of deliberate misunderstanding of each other.

I: Do you think that each person contributes to the polarity of the group or do you think it’s just the case with these two people.

P: I think that it’s only those two people who really -- where there is a personality clash, in the sense of consistently creates a kind of a negative kind of consciousness, and I don’t think that applies to -- I think that there are -- I think that when disagreements, with everybody else, when disagreements occur, there’s a certain consciousness [where we want to bring it back to coherence] OK. But in this disagreement there’s always conflict.

I: So when you’re saying silence . . . silence toward these two individuals who were a little bit -- they were dominating the conversation or how they are listening or appreciating the value of other people’s perspective? Or are they consciously oppressing their . . . ?

P: Yeah. There is a little bit of both. The evidence that actually listening to these two is when you hear them come up with something which was expressed by someone else, perhaps it’s altered [and you don’t have the sense that they were actually listening positively enough to become convinced that this is actually a good way to express things. So, and I think that I’ve seen that there has been people who -- I’ve seen people shift positions to the position of another of the group.

I: Is this the attrition process the function of the group developing over time a certain kind of nonverbal code of understanding or ways to understand each other. Can you see what I’m trying to say?

P: I’m wondering whether you’re talking about conflict or --

I: Well, what I’m thinking is just looking at it in terms of the notion of people meet once -- supposed to go by the Cannon laws of this to sustain you. And the group is functioning the way it is in the attrition process, do you follow? If you go through all these different states or mistakes, start feeling each other around. I’m thinking of your statement that the group has stalemated, right, you were saying that we’re relatively stalemated now.

P: Well, no I think that -- no, I’m saying that there’s a general perception that there’s a tendency to say this -- to say that we’re not noticing very much change, and that we seem to be in a repetitive pattern.

I: Well it seems like you know as far as I can see from all I’ve been able to gather the fact that this group has lasted as long as it has in the Western Hemisphere is unusual. The ones in Ojai that read that newsletter about everything we’ve been talking about "What do you do when people come in " you say, "well that’s like the real world. It’s disruptive but it’s like the actual daily living. If you don’t mind me dropping back into the earlier days -- when I was reading the literature the big buzz word that I was trying to grasp was "proprioception" as I picked up from poetry. Charles Olson had used it. Lynn Margulus had used it. She’s a microbiologist whose work is with mitochondria and is talking about the Gaia hypothesis. Sherrington, when I was researching it, a neurophysiologist, had popularized that word at the turn of the century. Have you read any of his work, or any of the work of neurologists?

P: Yeah, but I assume that the way Sherrington used it is the way it is still being used today, it just means body sensation.

I: So you don’t feel that this analogy that David Bohm uses is -- do you think he concocted it.

P: No, I think that he means something different than Sherrington did.

I: Ah! OK.

P: Bohm’s not talking about bodily sensation. He’s actually talking about self thought sensing itself. And he’s using proprioception as a metaphor.

Cat: Meow. Meow, Meow. Meow.

I: The cat wants me to turn the heater on. I’m not going to go that far. It’s interesting isn’t it? Um, proprioception --

P: Well, proprioception means --

I: Self-awareness or --

P: Well, it’s body sensation. It’s sensation of the position for example position of joints. So it’s part of the Somata --

I: It’s also light, too, right.

P: Proprioception the way I understand it from a physiological terminology it has to do with -- it’s a subset of somatic sensation, which is how you feel -- touch, feel. It’s only certain kinds of touch. It’s not propriopoception. Proprioception is the sensation of the self, the internal. When you think about all the other senses, they’re sensing something about the outside world -- you know, I guess when you hear your own voice that in a sense is proprioception. But the way in which it’s used technically is referring to the sensations of the body within the body. the sensations which are telling you about the state of the body. So if you then say OK let’s apply this to thought metaphorically by extension to thought in that sense that’s how I understand it, at least the way Bohm uses it.

I: Now, do you think that if you went along with Krishnamurti’s view that thought is a material process or most questions of new physics, that there’s a view that doesn’t divide, right. David Bohm is one of those people. That mind and matter are not reduced down to the other. Do you think that you can consciously think of presenting this as a bridge for the scientific community as an analogy just to point toward something?

P: I don’t know. I’ve taken it as -- and I think that it needs to be taken simply as an analogy.

I: Just an analogy.

P: Because the point, if you think about it, even if you were developing a new kind of non dualistic metaphysics, which I guess he was working on certainly -- how to present that -- how to how to -- you know. If you ask the question "Well, how am I going to get this idea across to other people you’re not going to do it by presenting it as a metaphysical system in the usual manner because you know that won’t work. Because what is required is a change in consciousness. And so what you want to do is to first of all try to convince people that it is worth looking at the world, looking at discourse, in a different way.

I: Looking at it in a different way.

P: Yeah, I mean -- OK so that’s the first step. I mean, that’s the only step that you really need to be concerned with because -- I mean I think Bohm, if he believed his own rhetoric, it must have been clear that he didn’t immediately know that was he was not convinced that he knew the truth.

I: Remember that this was a proposal right?

P: Right.

P: OK and the point is simply to get something started and see where it goes.

I: Yeah.

P: So then the question for him is "how best to start this?" And obviously the way, the best way to start it is to start with something which is as attractive to people in general, it’s possible, something that is not going to create an enormous adverse reaction.

I: Right.

P: So it’s a sort of a subtle way to get people to change their consciousness.

I: That’s interesting. It hasn’t’ turned into -- the business of dialogue -- the group has not turned into the status of rock musicians yet, but (I think I can remember the video and in reading his work he posited a grassroots movement, just small people working together where they’re living or somewhere with the internet -- you could argue that the interest is a grassroots, that it’s something different from the norm). When we say these terms like we use terms, a lot of us are really more advanced than most people -- the word "thought" "consciousness" "changing consciousness" "insight" -- a lot of these words are most people would not have a clue to what we’re talking about when we say that though is David Bohm says in Unfolding Meaning "thought is a program that conceals itself" and that’s a notion that goes over like a lead balloon in a lot of circles. Um, but the actual involvement with other people in a circle to me cuts through a lot of -- you can participate either way, right -- you can just be there -- and from what I can understand a lot the natives and the Quakers and other people do this, that that’s a value, a significant value for a lot of people, just being there in that space. But I think there’s a lot of our conditioning that wants it to be more than that, especially if we cut towards an intellectual bent, we want to be clever that we can use language, that we can respect other people’s intelligence because they’re glib. There’s been a lot of that don’t you suppose in our group. That’s just to be expected. I’m just going back to your statement of reaching other people, and people that need to be ironing things out or airing things out or still require something. Maybe in a way that I guess it turns this into a mystical set of proposals such as non-locality in physics, Bells Theorem and "we’re all connected" and "we effect each other" it can seem very -- remote.

P: Well, I -- Yeah and I’m concerned as to the indirect effect through our interactions with others. But I -- in principle there’s a potential in terms of what I was saying about between meetings

I: Oh, I tend to agree with you.

P: And the fact that dialogue groups are hard to keep going -- that brings up a question of where can we go with this? This is where say if there’s any conflict -- and I think that there is -- you know at least in the context that this is one of many approaches in a particular tribe, to change society in a sort of radical way then asking -- we can ask the sort of question "well, okay let’s look at our experience with dialogue so far and see what can we do in the spirit of dialogue? What else can we do in the spirit of dialogue? And how can we modify the way in which this has worked so far in more experimental way in the sense of let’s deliberately change things and see what happens"

I: Well, have you come up with anything that we can change?

P: Well, I mean, we were discussing some ideas along those lines not long ago. The idea that perhaps we should start each dialogue with somebody giving a presentation or an issue of particular importance to them, to get the dialogue started in a coherent mode Perhaps bringing in reading material Daniel proposed bring in something along the lines of the seminar experience. Other ideas are well -- how can we keep this dialogue perhaps going in between meetings, perhaps by having more contact with each other in between these meetings. One thing that occurred to me just as we were talking is that we haven’t really discussed this question of "in what way the experience within the meeting effects the way in which we interact with people between -- that effects our lives. This certain sort of question which came up ten months ago on a couple of occasions at least. But I don’t remember that anything has recently been said about it. I think it could come up today if we were to admit well, it doesn’t seem -- it seems that what’s happened is that the dialogue has become compartmentalized into something which is a fun thing that we do every two weeks, and it doesn’t seem to be connected to the rest of our lives. And that sort of question well, how could we connect it to the rest of our lives -- and an idea which has come up has been well, perhaps we should as a group or at least a subgroup should perhaps get involved in doing something together in the social realm. And that is an idea which has not really been looked into. And I’m thinking that if we were actually to do that you know that could bring about quite a radical effect on our discourse.

I: Yeah. There would have to be some committed people there.

P: Well --

I: As I see it there --

P: Well, you see that’ s the thing -- you don’t necessarily need the whole group to do it, you just need well three or four people maybe.

I: Some people probably in there walk of life are doing these things. I was going to ask you -- just tell you in passing that I sent fourteen questionnaires out -- that was the limits of my address capability -- and if Daniel fills out his -- it’ll ten or fourteen -- I can tell you that only one person did not see value in or felt that it contributed to daily living. And that’ interesting because a lot of these people are no longer participating. I tried to get back to people from earlier on and I was only able to get one or two, and one out of the two responded affirmatively. she is busy raising her children.

P: Sure, but as I recall it had much more effect on my daily living at first and after a while it’s become sort of a regular.

I: Now, if we were to reduce this that we were here for the rest of our life in London do you think that it would change the seriousness or involvement with the group. Because with me, frankly, I couldn’t commit to the meetings. I’m here on a circumstance now. I just do not feel I could survive here. I’m just -- it could be the limits of my perception or my ability to evolve as a human being. What I’m trying to say is if we were actually in a community that had a stake like back in the days of old when tribes were in a circle apparently that’s the --

P: Yeah -- I don’t think that everybody needs to be stable that way, and I’m going to be leaving soon --

I: Yeah, OK. So we’re in the modern -- The Twentieth Century.

P: Yeah, and that’s fine. As long as there is a core of stability I mean, I don’t’ know -- I mean, I suspect that this group is not going to survive simply because there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting new people in. the only -- I mean it could be, I think it could be rekindled.

I: Do you think we should drop Bohm and Krishnamurti and all that stuff period. That was part of the -- you know -- representation of this was that Bohm was a theoretical physicist bla bla bla. I mean that was me who did it I shouldn’t have.

P: Um -- you see I thought that was an essential aspect which perhaps should -- OK if I were to restart this I think I would take Bohm’s ideas a lot more seriously than we did. And I think that what the way we did it I mean all that material was there but it wasn’t Bohm it was kind of -- it was much more general than that -- a whole bunch of ideas about the new physics and so forth. Things which were tangential, not particularly related to Bohm’s dialogue proposal. And I think that there were certain ways the group developed which were quite different from what Bohm proposed. You know, Bohm, for example, in the dialogue proposed that sort of . . .

I: I handed out the Dialogue proposal

P: One of the things that you said, one of the things that you pointed out is the importance of having a facilitator first to get people started and I think -- I, you know -- the experience we had I think -- I mean of course I came in ten or eleven sessions in.

I: Well, let me explain. The idea was you’d have a weekend. I wasn’t able to do that. So what I did was I ordered a video. And it turns out that it took two months for the video to come, so I showed what I had thought was an interview with Bill Angelos and David Bohm called "Beyond Limits" where they used the analogy along the lines of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, that was done in Holland, and it turned out to be just a very slick take: and although the Dali Lama was in it, it had a dilutive new age quality to it. Although Bohm was quite clear in his communications, it really wasn’t about dialogue. Then I did The Future of Humanity with Krishnamurti and Bohm waiting. So it was a good two to three months -- four meetings, five meetings of -- and a lot of people came and went. If we had that ability to do the weekend maybe that would have been a factor. But from what I can see from the other dialogue groups -- they did that and still went the way of all things. So, I don’t know. So you don’t feel it was too much of authority worship to use David Bohm as a --

P: well, actually I think what -- well -- I don’t know well -- I guess I think what would have been useful -- I don’t know --

I: We can only speculate.

P: Well, I think what would have been useful would have been to have something closer to a -- not a tutorial because you know I’m not sure that a video is the right way to get something like this started -- I think what needs to be done is to have a facilitator point out what is happening right at the start when various kinds of interactions --

I: Yeah. well, Juanita was quite eloquent at that you know at the beginning she was doing a very good job of essentially pointing out what polarity was -- Like, she wasn’t trying to say right or wrong, but she claims to be trained in that kind of thing. My feeling was that I thought even Axle, you know, all those people did a very good job of something happened there in twelve meetings. That’s how I have it recorded in my mind in my notes. But be that as it may, when I tried to outreach I tried to have everybody contribute instead of me being the doer, and one of the outreach letters the person wouldn’t publish it because she said "well, what’s the big deal about dialogue? A scientist talking about it?" So What? She saw only the derogatory status of Bohm as a theoretical physicist -- it wasn’t my writing it was somebody else’s.. So I think that I don’t have any bright ideas on any of this.

P: Yeah. I mean when you think about the difficulties I guess they’re kind of inevitable, and there is this problem that it’s definitely something which you can only learn it by doing it. And so there’s various patterns which can be pointed out, but perhaps pointing them out doesn’t really do any good. I mean, you have to go through the frustrations. And I think that’s why I wonder whether the dialogue perhaps can only reach a very small minority, because it’ s only a small minority who are set up or prepared to go through the various difficulties in the process. To have motivations which can be construed..

I: Yeah Um, what motivated you to get involved with Krishnamurti’s work or David Bohm’s work, you just read his work in research as a student or . . . ?

P: I Actually I was introduced into Krishnamurti a long time ago. I don’t remember quite how it happened, but what was being said the way I was thinking about certain questions, so I think that the timing --

I: So you had already come to these things on your own. The walnut ripens when its ready.

P: Well, yeah. I mean, I’d been involved with Krishnamurti . . . there’s a group who were showing Krishnamurti videos in town several years ago, so I watched many videos with them and after that we had a discussion of Krishnamurti texts, which was actually very similar to dialogue.

I: I came upon Krishnamurti in 1969 and in the pavilion in Ojai at the talks where I saw the videos of Bohm and Krishnamurti; the first thing that struck me was when they were talking about thought and intelligence: thought losing its function and becoming essence as stated The Awakening Of Intelligence. Now, it seems like David Bohm has taken that and worked on it with all of his training as a scientist to make it something to put to the test of daily living with a lot of rigorous analysis. You know, with his use of similar differences and different similarities, contingency and chance, he’s taken his whole experience of thirty to forty years or whatever he was involved in, and tried to put it into some kind of a logistics. But he didn’t live long enough to be able to keep going. Do you feel that -- do you agree with me that he did a very thorough job of representing the limits of his thinking and a possible contribution to the troubles and difficulties that humanity is facing right now? Or do you see him as a poor analyzer that just took a lot of objectification science and put it into a --

P: Well, I’m not sure that his experience as a scientist -- I’m not sure there’s a connection between that and his analysis of dialogue. I mean, this is kind of a just a sort of an in thing to do, to get involved in speculating about consciousness and so on. Quite a lot of people are doing it these days, but I don’t see that their experience in physics -- I mean, there are certain concepts in physics which kind of act kind of useful to model these chaotic dynamic systems, the problem of the observer-interaction complementarity -- but there are conceptual difficulties in modern physics -- there may be a kind a richness of a conceptual structure there which we can go on to think about but I mean I don’t really see any physics in Bohm’s analysis. What I see in Bohm’s analysis is a careful reflective thinker who could just as easily be -- I mean I don’t see it being that difficult. I mean, he could just as easily be a literary genius.

I: Very interesting point. I was thinking of his comment on the days when he was working with Oppenheimer that there were conversations in coffee shops and quantum theory was written from a sort of philosophical perspective, not abstract equations.. He’s always trying to stay I think close to philosophical views. It’s very interesting that you see that he was an individual in his own right who had concern for humanity probably from the beginning. It’s just that’s the way he lived.

P: What I’m saying is the fact that he was a physicist is kind of accidental. I don’t see this being of particular importance to the question of his analysis of thought.

I: Do you think that his views are valuable.

P: Well.

I: What way could we improve them, what way could we rid it of a lot of superfluous language, or is that not a good way to look at it.

P: Yeah, I don’t know because I’ve been involved trying to figure out what is the right way to think about Bohm or several years myself and I’ve gotten to a point now where I am confused..

I: Sometimes we have to let the well fill.

P: And my own experience of reading Bohm is that I find him more valuable as sort of a methodology than content.

I: When you say methodology . . .?

P: I mean, the way -- if you observe the way in which he thinks it’s kind of like this is also the value of Heidegger, if you follow the style of this thinker, this is a training in how to think that way yourself. But the ideas that you come up with could be quite different and I think that the ideas if Bohm -- they don’t strike me as being particularly striking or particularly original. But the kind of reflective style which -- again, I mean I don’t know that it’s that Bohm is unique -- I don’t think Bohm is unique. I think that he’s actually one of quite a large number of people who are at least turning in that direction. I think that there is a zeitgeist. But I don’t know whether it’s going to take root and grow into something.. But, you know, I think so. I mean, if you look at the way in which modern philosophy has gone on the continent --

I: In Europe.

P: In Europe, yeah. You see that there’s -- I mean it’s gotten to the point that I can’t understand what any of them are talking about -- but the structure --

I: For example who are some of them?

P: Derridda!

I: He represents the deconstructive approach to inquiry.

P: The other people they’re important, but they’re more, I see them more as politically motivated.

I: That’s years ago the Frankfurt school?

P: I think so. Sixties, seventies. They’re still canonized. Habermas is a representative.

I: OK. including Gadamer?

P: Yeah. Uh. But yeah I mean the postmodern there’s sort of a -- yeah, there’s a questioning of the ability of thought to solve these problems. I mean, there’s a self reflective aspect to the criticism. You know, the kind of questioning that it’s asking well, "is thought capable of criticizing itself?" And it’s that kind of intense self-reflectivity which is -- I mean, it’s just kind of that the modern approach is to just sort of to make certain kinds of assumptions, and of course scientists can’t face that. There are certain axioms which we simply accept in order to form a basis or create a structure. And yet recently people have been looking -- because I mean the rationale for that is that if you don’t do this you end up with nihilism, you end up with no basis, in sort of a pit of relativism supposedly.

I: You mean without having universal principles.

P: Without having an axiom, without having certain principles which you accept which you don’t further question. The idea is that the questioning has to stop somewhere. And the postmodern and in particular Derridda is kind of offering an alternative to that. I would say personally I’m no longer looking at this stuff. I cannot follow it because it’s to convoluted for me.

I: I’ve heard the recent idea has returned to classical literature.

P: I mean, it always --

I: Oh, it’s always --

P: It’s always returned to classical literature.

I: So, deconstructive is not necessarily a nuance, it’s a return to --

P: Well, no deconstruction that’s criticism -- I mean, he’s deconstructing various -- I mean, his work is basically a criticism of past thinkers and he’s not constructing a system of his own, he’s deconstructing the system of type including whatever you call classical literature.

I: I’m thinking of the Greeks.

P: Well, he hasn’t -- I mean his stuff hasn’t tackled the Greeks [ Um . . . So but what I’m saying is that there is a -- OK the similarity that I see between what is going on in this century and this centuries view of philosophy and what Bohm is doing with dialogue is the questioning assumptions, the opening up of potentially new ways to think. I mean, that’s I guess what attracted me to dialogue in the first place is that there’s this idea of "if we don’t define ahead of time what it is and what we want to achieve then we leave open a possibility that something which we really need, something which is really important might come up." OK, but implicit in that is the question of how do we use this. And that’s where I find myself I think that Bohm I sort of find his basic principle is opening up to the basic study or the collective unknown. And trusting to the creative process to come up with something new. You know, this is a -- this is something which is never assured of any success. But it seems to be the only way to go. There’s no alternative to it. And one can expect it to have a sort of rough path if the first conclusion that you come to is that we’re also bound by various patterns of thought which we’ve been conditioned to. But that means we can’t really come up with anything new at his moment so far. From there we have to look at that and say what can we do then.

I: Well, you could look at this a temporary scaffolding. The analogy of the vortex, from there we go to areas that processionally could possibly be a contribution wily -- nily.

P: Yeah, there’s something a little bit weird about talking about the future impact of this when the whole principle is to open up to possibilities which we can’t conceive of.

I: Well, that’s been the criticism of the MIT group. But from what I’ve seen and the little I’ve known, if they’re doing dialogue how can one criticize, if what they’re actually doing is along the lines of Bohmian dialogue.

P: Well, if they’re doing a modification on it that’s fine.

I: Yeah, I’ve taken that position too. There’s the idea that they’re trying to improve the organizational efficiency.

P: Yeah, OK, so it’s from a political standpoint this might not be good.

I: The other side is that they have all the money in the world to do teleconferences and people will pay three hundred dollars or somebody will pay for it you know write it off.

P: OK perhaps they give the term "dialogue" a bad rap.

I: Odwalla juice does dialogue right? They fly everybody in from wherever into Santa Cruz. . .

Contextual Essay ... by Nick Consoletti