David Bohm

The Hidden Order

What if the separateness we perceive is an illusion? What if beneath the apparent fragmentation of reality lies an undivided wholeness that our senses cannot directly perceive?

This was the vision of David Bohm (1917-1992), a physicist who worked with Einstein, was blacklisted during McCarthyism, and spent his career developing a radical alternative to mainstream quantum mechanics - one that restored coherence to a universe that Copenhagen interpretation had made fundamentally random.

The Implicate Order

Bohm proposed that visible reality - what we can observe and measure - is only the explicate order: a surface manifestation of something deeper. Beneath it lies the implicate order, a dimension where everything is enfolded into everything else.

Think of a hologram. Cut it in half, and each half contains the whole image (at lower resolution). The information is distributed throughout, not localized in any one place. Bohm suggested reality works the same way.

In the implicate order:

Separation is appearance, not reality
Everything contains information about everything else
What we call “particles” are more like ripples on a deeper ocean
Consciousness and matter may share common ground

Why Physics Rejected Him

Bohm’s pilot wave theory offered a deterministic alternative to quantum randomness. In his model, particles have definite positions guided by a quantum potential - a field of active information that connects everything.

The theory worked. It made the same predictions as Copenhagen interpretation. But it required accepting nonlocality: that particles remain connected across any distance, instantly.

Einstein loved this aspect. The physics establishment did not. Bohm was marginalized, his ideas ignored for decades. Only after his death did experiments confirming quantum nonlocality (Bell’s theorem violations) rehabilitate his reputation.

The Dialogue Process

Beyond physics, Bohm developed a practice of dialogue - a form of group conversation designed to reveal the hidden assumptions that fragment thought.

He noticed that most discussion is really debate: people defending positions, seeking to win. True dialogue requires suspending assumptions, listening deeply, and allowing collective meaning to emerge.

This practice influenced organizational development, conflict resolution, and consciousness studies. It reflected his core insight: fragmentation is the fundamental problem, and wholeness must be actively cultivated.

Connection to Consciousness

Late in life, Bohm collaborated with neuroscientist Karl Pribram on the holographic brain theory. If the brain stores information holographically (distributed, not localized), and the universe is structured holographically, then mind and matter share the same fundamental architecture.

This wasn’t mysticism - it was physics extended to its logical conclusion. If reality is fundamentally undivided, then the apparent separation between observer and observed, between consciousness and matter, is a feature of the explicate order, not ultimate reality.

The Legacy

Bohm’s work provides a scientific framework for ideas that mystics have intuited for millennia:

As above, so below - correspondence across scales
All is One - fundamental unity beneath apparent diversity
Consciousness is primary - mind and matter emerge from the same ground

His implicate order is not mysticism wearing scientific clothes. It’s rigorous physics that happens to converge with perennial wisdom.