An Uncommon Collaboration written and presented by David Edmond Moody at the Krishnamurti Center in Ojai, CA. (September 9-11, 2018).

My notes from this presentation are many, and I can’t address all the things about this unique relationship between J. Krishnamurti (K) to David Bohm (B) explored in Moody’s weekend workshop. Another problem I have in choosing content is that almost all, if not all, of K’s teachings connect with one another, so it is nearly impossible to order them, but I will try to give my take on the topics as those topics appear in my notes.

 

Glossary: WI (K’s What Is/What we think exists), WIBWI (What Is Behind What Is/unknowable/B’s Implicit potential), Analog (One physical process that is significantly comparable to another physical process), Big Bang (the near singularity source that started our universe expanding), error (all magnitudes existing statistically everywhere), zero point energy (error with a potential to leak through in any location in space), entropy (the running down of usable/available energy), IMPLICIT (implied potential/less than 100% sampled, nevertheless existing), EXPLICIT (observed and explained/near 100% sampled),

 

1. K: THE OBSERVER IS THE OBSERVED

The philosophy presented on this Union of Opposites website is relational. Any change in our observable universe becomes a relationship boundary between systems (system is a thermodynamic term, here meaning whatever is isolated by a boundary). Relationship boundaries that arise between systems become what we think of as objects. Objects become new systems that relate to one another over their own relationship boundaries which become objects/systems (and so on).

 

(But when K speaks of BEGINNING/END, OR CAUSE/EFFECT, OBSERVER/OBSERVED as being one, I think K speaks of that place, that early and primitive center, that way of looking at things, that is available to all of us. The farther you go back in time the closer the OBSERVER is to the OBSERVED. That place does not occur naturally in humans, because of the way we process our responses our environment, thus creating psychological time. I believe K’s experience comes from earlier in the energetic beginning of everything (I hope to explain this in more detail below).
K: TRUTH IS A PATHLESS LAND

Because once you’re there (truth/WIBWI) the path-to-WIBWI naturally disappears. There is no one path. K’s existence is explained at this site as the near singularity source of our universe, from which universal expansion emerges.

K: HOW DOES MISERY AND CONFLICT BEGIN?

 

At the beginning of the Christian Bible in the book of Genesis we follow the creation of God’s universe in six days. Each day, after creating something new, God saw that his work was GOOD. If we are made in the image of our creator, then, as a model for our action, shouldn’t we see the fruits of our labor in the world as GOOD?

 

So, MISERY AND CONFLICT must come out of not finding a way, or a place, from which to see the GOOD. Many religions around the world, especially Asian religions call this feeling of GOOD at the center as BLISS.

 

K says that from his place, FEAR cannot be, CONFLICT cannot exist. How to arrive at that place, how K arrived, might be a subject for further insight.

 

B: THE IMPLICATE ORDER (Wholeness and The Implicit Order)

 

B’s Experiment With Concentric Cylinders

An ink droplet goes from an Explicit existence (B’s ink droplet/WI/What Is) to Implicit (ink droplet disappears (becomes part of the WIBWI by shearing and mixing with the liquid around the ink) to Explicit (the ink droplet reforms and becomes WI).

 

What’s missing? Who’s perception creates or explains what seems to be happening? Who cements the explicit relationship/boundary/action-reaction et cetera?

Some scientists confuse themselves by asking what happened before the Big Bang (the near singularity source from which our universe expands). What did happen before the Big Bang? The answer is “nothing.” Why should that be? Everything we describe seems to have a cause, a forbearer, why not our universe? Well, except for the idea of zero point energy (statistical error that might have started it all), all we have is Bohm’s implicit order, what I call WIBWI (What Is Behind What Is). From there each new change (maybe running down of energy (entropy)) creates a relationship boundary that describes it’s own What Is. Early on the action/reaction is nearly instantaneous, the observer in primitive systems is the observed. But duration is created as internal boundaries form in more complex systems (like us) with more complex boundaries.

K: PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME

 

Our bodies take in information from our environment, for example our eyes bounce around in their sockets to pick up snippets of images around us, but it is the brain that processes those images, using more than light, so that when we see the colors, and textures and shapes of things, we know much about them based on what we learned in the past. This causes a delay in our reaction to visual stimuli because the process in the brain takes so long, but we are usually unaware of all the details of the process, only aware of the results. So duration and time is constructed in the process of thought, and what underlies that in the retrieval and re-organization of memory.

K: WHEN MOVEMENT CEASES THEN COMFORT COMES

 

Can you fall into that state? Without intention? I don’t know, but if we can attain a state of reception (waiting to understand or receive) then we can, at least, prepare ourselves to attain such a state.

 

In my experiments the boundary keeps folding upon itself, moving inward, in fractal dimensions going from near 3-D to near 2-D. (See Stephen Wolfram’s Book, A New Kind of Science for fun ways to understand fractional dimensions). I’ve often wondered whether someone existing in the present can access perspectives from the past that created them. I believe that the near source singularity of our expanding universe, Bohm’s Implicit Order, my WIBWI, is the key. But the question is, “How do you get there?” My answer might be that you are always there, every state of awareness that exists from the very beginning may be available to us, but our society raises us to see the explicit universe rather than visiting the implicit WIBWI universe, that which may persist beyond death (at least beyond our ego-death). Some people who meditate in their own way to get there say their lives are like writing on a tablet of paper. Pretty soon all the paper is covered in our explicit scribble and there is nowhere left to think. So just in a practical way, it makes sense to clear our minds. I believe allowing that original state of pure potential does that for us (among many other things).

 

B: BOHMIAN DIALOGUE

Leads to another observation. What is our goal for this dialogue? Some say there is no goal. There cannot be a goal if we follow strict K rules. But if we want to further the play (want K’s teaching to continue and grow (described in Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse)) we need to have a vision. We need to bring the explicit in to balance our growing Implicit. What Is should always be balanced by What Is Behind What Is. And What Is Behind What Is should be balanced by What Is (our open-hearted and open-minded knowledge of ourselves). There are many benchmarks for group meetings that encourage participation where each member of the group empowers the others.

 

K: CAN THOUGHT OBSERVE ITSELF?

I assume K is referencing to the PROCESS OF THOUGHT. We do not think of a process as observing itself. We think of the mechanisms of that process capable of observing. The mechanism to me, the form that generates the function, is the relationship boundary of the universe which we all have access to. However, we isolate ourselves in very focused identities that have trouble with their abilities to observe anything except from their own isolated points of view. In my model, I think of myself, my RELATIONSHIP BOUNDARY PART OF THE UNIVERSE as an antenna. Everything I am generates a statistical distribution of possibilities for myself (thought/actions). The more I focus on me, the less chance I have of solving problems creatively (capturing rarer and newer thoughts). The neat thing about human beings is that we seem to have antennas to different states of mind and different potential outcomes. All we need to do is find out what it feels like to look in different places. But in each place, in each perspective, or state of mind, there are what I call Incoming (thought potentials raining down). I think this question that K proposes leads to the very experience where thought, and time, and pathways, cease to exist. A place where he existed for a while and may still exist to this day.

 

K: REJECT ALL AUTHORITY

 

There is an irony, here. Why?

What is idolatry? It is when we give our power away to someone or something else.

 

Why should any of us think we have power?

I believe there is genius in everyone. Is my genius in my creativity, in discovering things that have been overlooked? I don’t know. I can’t know, because the IMPLICIT, the center, the WIBWI cannot be teased open to find further secrets. It is a sea of potential from which everything else emerges. I can say that sometimes it feels as if Bohm and K and others are speaking to and through me, so maybe if we find that place for each of us, we may release the genius within. All I know is that I attempt to listen to the genius in each person. I’m not always successful, but when I’m in that right place, it just happens—the genius within all of us rains down.

 

This is why I think K was so adamant about rejecting authority. But clinging to K and his teachings without any new blood, new genius, may cause the seepage of his principles to die with him. He is not gone, because he lives in me, and he lives in all of us that find that place, that source of energy, he became so familiar with in his lifetime.