In Thought as a System theoretical physicist David Bohm takes as his subject the role of thought and knowledge at every level of human affairs, from our private reflections on personal identity to our collective efforts to fashion a tolerable civilization.

Elaborating upon principles of the relationship between mind and matter first put forward in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Dr Bohm rejects the notion that our thinking processes neutrally report on what is ‘out there’ in an objective world. He explores the manner in which thought actively participates in forming our perceptions, our sense of meaning and our daily actions. He suggests that collective thought and knowledge have become so automated that we are in large part controlled by them, with a subsequent loss of authenticity, freedom and order. In three days of conversation with fifty seminar participants in Ojai, California, Dr Bohm offers a radical perspective on an underlying source of human conflict, and inquires into the possibility of individual and collective transformation.

In Bohm’s view, we have inherited a belief that mind (or thought) is of an inherently different and higher order than matter. This belief has nurtured a faith in what we call objectivity — the capacity to observe and report neutrally on some object or event, without having any effect on what we are looking at, or without being affected by it. Historically, this perspective has given us a scientific and cultural world view in which isolated, fragmentary parts mechanically interact with one another. Bohm points out that this fragmentary view corresponds to ‘reality’ in significant respects, but suggests that we have overextended our faith in the objectivist perspective. Once we make the critical (and false) assumption that thought and knowledge are not participating in our sense of reality, but only reporting on it, we are committed to a view that does not take into account the complex, unbroken processes that underlie the world as we experience it.

To help bring into focus thought’s participatory nature, Bohm undertakes an extensive redefinition of thought itself. To begin with, thought is not fresh, direct perception. It is literally that which has been ‘thought’ — the past, carried forward into the present. It is the instantaneous display of memory, a superimposition of images onto the active, living present. On the one hand, this memory is what allows us to perform even the simplest of tasks, such as getting dressed in the morning. On the other hand, memory is also responsible for various aspects of fear, anxiety or apprehension, and the actions that proceed from these memories. Thought, then, is also inclusive of feelings, in the form of latent emotional experiences. Not only negative, painful emotions are folded into thought, but pleasurable ones as well. Indeed, the whole spectrum of emotions as we typically experience them is seen by Bohm as thought-related.

The manner in which feeling and thought interpenetrate one another is central to Bohm’s view of the functioning of consciousness. Throughout the mind and body, he says, they form a structure of neurophysiological reflexes. Through repetition, emotional intensity and defensiveness, these reflexes become ‘hard-wired’ in consciousness, to such an extent that they respond independently of our conscious choice. If, for example, someone tells you that a member of your family is both ugly and stupid, you will most likely have instantaneous surges of adrenalin and blood pressure that are inseparable from your thought: ‘He is wrong! He is rude and malicious for saying such things!’ The thought ‘He is wrong!’ will tend to justify and perpetuate the bodily surges. Likewise, the surges will tend to certify the thought. In time, the experience will fade, but it is effectively stored in the memory and becomes ‘thought’. There it waits to be instantly recalled the next time a similar situation is encountered.

In addition to emotions and reflexes, Bohm includes human artifacts in his definition of thought. Computer systems, musical instruments, cars, buildings — these are all illustrations of thought in its fixed, concrete form. From Bohm’s perspective, to make a fundamental separation between thought and its products would be the equivalent of suggesting that whether a person is male or female is a separate phenomenon from the genetic process that determined the sex to begin with. Such a separation would in fact illustrate the very fragmentation under examination. Finally, Bohm posits that thought and knowledge are primarily collective phenomena. Our common experience is that we have personal thoughts that come from our individual ‘self’. Bohm suggests that this is a culturally inherited sensibility that overemphasizes the role of isolated parts. He inverts this view, noting that the ‘flow of meaning’ between people is more fundamental than any individual’s particular thoughts. The individual is thus seen as an idiosyncrasy (literally, ‘private mixture’) of the collective movement of values, meanings and intentions.

The essential relevance of Bohm’s redefinition of thought is the proposal that body, emotion, intellect, reflex and artifact are now understood as one unbroken field of mutually informing thought. All of these components interpenetrate one another to such an extent, says Bohm, that we are compelled to see ‘thought as a system’ — concrete as well as abstract, active as well as passive, collective as well as individual. Our traditional world view, in an attempt to maintain a simple, orderly image of cause and effect, does not take into account these subtler aspects of thought’s activity. This leads to what Bohm calls a ‘systemic fault’ in the whole of thought.

The issue here, says Bohm, is that ‘thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then struggles against what it is doing’. For example, flattery is a pleasing experience which usually sets up a reflex of receptivity toward the one who flatters. If Jane fails to flatter John when he expects her to, or takes advantage of him in some unpleasant way, John will attribute his subsequent bad feelings to something Jane did. He fails to see that he participated in constructing the reflex that produced not only the good feelings, but the bad ones as well. A similar process of incoherence is at work in the nation-state. When the United States attributes diabolical characteristics to various Middle East countries that thwart its easy access to oil, it is not taking into account its own central involvement in an international petroleum-based economy which quite naturally gives inordinate power to those who possess crude oil. In this case, the reflexive response may be war. The feature common to both examples is the sense of being in control with an independent response: ‘I will get even with her’ or ‘we must demonstrate where the real power lies’. In Bohm’s view, the real power is in the activity of thought.

While independence and choice appear to be inherent in our actions, we are actually being driven by agendas which act faster than, and independent of, our conscious choice. Bohm sees the pervasive tendency of thought to struggle against its own creations as the central dilemma of our time. Consequently, we must now endeavor not only to apply thought, but to understand what thought is, to grasp the significance of its immediate activity, both in and around us. Is it possible, then, to be aware of the activity of thought without acquiring a new agenda, namely, the intention to ‘fix’ thought?

Can we suspend our habit of defining and solving problems, and attend to thought as if for the first time? Such open learning, says Bohm, lays the foundation for an exploration of proprioception. Proprioception (literally,‘self-perception’) is that which enables us to walk, sit, eat, or engage in any other daily activity without having constantly to monitor what we are doing. An instantaneous feedback system informs the body, allowing it to act without conscious control. If we wish to scratch a mosquito bite on the back of our leg, it is proprioception that allows us to scratch the bite without (a) looking at our hand, (b) looking at our leg or (c) having the mistaken impression that someone else is scratching our leg.

Dr Bohm points out that while proprioception of the body comes naturally, we do not seem to have proprioception of thought. If, however, mind and matter are indeed a continuum, it is reasonable to explore the extension of physiological proprioception into the more subtle material activity of thought. Bohm suggests that the immediacy and accuracy of bodily proprioception are inhibited at the level of thought due to the gross accumulation of reflexes, personified in the image of a ‘thinker’ — an interior entity who seems to look out on the world, as well as looking inwardly at emotions, thoughts and so on. This thinker, says Bohm, is a product of thought, rather than a transcendental entity; and the thinker is steadfastly committed to preserving some variation of its own reflexive structure. Here the state of open learning is crucial for new understanding. If the reflexive structure can be simply attended to, rather than acted upon (as the thinker would be inclined to do), then the momentum which drives the reflexes is already being dissipated. In this vein, Bohm outlines a series of practical experiments which call into awareness the interplay of words and feelings in the formation of reflexes. This conjunction of open learning and concrete experiments with the thought-feeling dynamic suggests the beginning of proprioception of thought.

Such proprioception is intimately related to that which Dr Bohm refers to as ‘insight’. We often associate insight with the ‘a-ha!’ phenomenon of having suddenly grasped the significance of some puzzle or problem. Bohm’s notion of insight includes such particular instances, but extends to a much more general, and generative, level of application. He sees insight as an active energy, a subtle level of intelligence

in the universe at large, of a different order from that which we commonly experience in the mind/matter domain. He suggests that such insight has the capacity to directly affect the structure of the brain, dispelling the ‘electrochemical fog’ generated by accumulated reflexes. Quite unlike the memory-laden structure of a ‘thinker’ operating upon thought, proprioception provides a medium of appropriate subtlety for the activity of such insight. In this way, learning, proprioception and insight work together, with the potential to reorder our thought processes and bring about a general level of coherence unavailable through thought alone.

While all these experiments can be undertaken by individuals, Bohm points to a complementary mode of inquiry through the process of group dialogue. He suggests that such meetings have no advance agenda, other than the intention to explore thought. And though a facilitator may be useful in the beginning, the meetings should be free of authority so that people speak directly to one another. In groups of twenty to forty people, the systemic and reflexive nature of thought can come clearly into focus, eliciting a wide range of responses from the participants. Self-images, assumptions and prejudices may all emerge, often with their attendant emotions — defensiveness, anger, fear and many others. The virtue of such an approach, says Bohm, is that the group may be able to detect the flow of meaning passing amongst its members. This meaning may be the content of some particular subject; it may also be the quickened pulses that pass through the group as the result of conflict between two or more members. Such dialogue holds out the possibility of direct insight into the collective movement of thought, rather than its expression in any particular individual. Bohm suggests that the potential for collective intelligence inherent in such groups could lead to a new and creative art form, one which may involve significant numbers of people and beneficially affect the trajectory of our current civilization.

Throughout Thought as a System Dr Bohm emphasizes that the model of thought he puts forward is propositional. Not only does he deny any final knowledge of these issues for himself; he claims that no such knowledge is even possible. Such knowledge would be thought, which can only make approximate representations. Dr Bohm often invoked Alfred Korzybski’s observation that any object of thought (including, for Bohm, thought itself) is both ‘more than what we think, and different’. None the less, as we do rely to a great extent on images and representations, a relatively accurate map of the processes of thought, based on clear observation and sound inferences, is surely more desirable than a flawed map. It was Dr Bohm’s intention that Thought as a System be approached as just such a propositional map, to be tested against direct life experiences, and measured by its veracity and its usefulness in reducing conflict and sorrow in the world at large.

Lee Nichol, Ojai, California September, 1993