WHOLENESS REGAINED Revisiting Bohms Dialogue Lee Nichol
<http://www.irfs.com/bohmwholenessregained.html>
(This essay is included in Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication,
editors Bela Banathy and Patrick Jenlink, Kluwer-Plenum Academic Publishing ,
Beginning in 1985, David Bohm put forward a series of propositions regarding a
new vision for contemporary dialogue. This vision received considerable
attention throughout the
But despite such widespread interest in Bohm’s vision, the sustainability
of dialogue seems to have been erratic, even meager. In part, this may be due
to the natural cycling of fads, which are notoriously hot and cold. Partly as
well, this lack of sustainability may arise from the commercialization of dialogue,
in which the training of facilitators takes precedence over sustained immersion
in the actual activity of dialogue. And partly, the lack of sustainability may
arise from an incomplete understanding of dialogue itself, as proposed by Bohm.
This chapter will focus on the last of these prospects, examining the manner in
which certain essential features of dialogue have been marginalized, resulting
in a popular conception of dialogue that often leads to frustration and
confusion when implemented. By way of this examination, I hope to take at least
a few small steps toward restoring these essential features to their rightful
place in Bohm’s scheme. It will perhaps become clear that Bohm was not
particularly interested in finding novel ways to arrange our cultural and
conversational furniture. Rather, his interest was in the possibility of a
radically new state of mind, a concrete alteration that penetrates the core of
a person’s experience and has the potential to communicate itself
directly in a group setting.
DIALOGUE IN CONTEXT
Shortly before his death in 1992, David Bohm made a curious remark regarding
the vagaries of dialogue. The conversation had to do with why dialogue groups
struggled so much, why many people felt discouraged with the process after
serious and sustained attempts to exploit its potential.
“I think people are not doing enough work on their own, apart from the
dialogue groups,” Bohm offered. This observation seems paradoxical, not
least because dialogue is by general definition a collaborative process, and by
Bohm’s definition one which seeks to move beyond a sense of strict
individualism and open into a domain of collective, participatory fellowship.
The notion of working “on one’s own” would seem to circumvent
the very essence of dialogue itself.
We can begin to unravel this paradox by recognizing that Bohm’s work in
dialogue derives from a larger context of inquiry that had captured his
imagination for decades. In tracing the origins of Bohm’s ideas on
dialogue, we find that virtually all of his published material on this topic
was excerpted from meetings and seminars in which dialogue was an outgrowth of
more fundamental issues regarding the nature of consciousness and experience
per se. In most of these seminars an examination of the ego, and the
ego’s compulsive insistence on stabilizing its perceived territory,
played a central role. Bohm claims that the ramifications of the ego process
– both individual and collective – are at the root of human
fragmentation and suffering.
In these seminars, participants moved through days of in-depth exploration of
the ego process. Sometimes woven into these days, and sometimes at the very end
of them, Bohm would put forward the rough outlines of his current thoughts on
dialogue, inquiring into “the flow of meaning,” “impersonal
fellowship,” and “suspension of assumptions.” In this way he
would transition the groups from an emphasis on the individualistic aspects of
ego to an emphasis on these same issues as they might appear in a group context.
At the heart of his dialogue proposal was the prospect that awareness of the
movement of ego, willingly engaged in by a number of people simultaneously,
might quicken insights into the ego process that could take much longer if
approached only on an individual basis.
After a few years of these meetings, Bohm’s thoughts on dialogue were
collected in a small self-published booklet, On Dialogue. Intended primarily
for distribution to those on the mailing lists of the “Bohm
seminars,” this booklet sold a surprising 20,000 copies. While covering
many of the central features of dialogue, the booklet nonetheless contained
relatively little overt emphasis on the nature of the ego. This was in part due
to the fact that its initial target audience was already familiar with this
territory, either through having attended meetings with Bohm or through having
read transcripts of those meetings.
Effectively, then, a “shorthand” version of dialogue – a
pithy but incomplete extraction – found its way into mainstream culture.
The incomplete version of dialogue disseminated in this way has been amplified
in recent years, primarily through the publication of several mass-market
“how-to” books which put forward variants of Bohm’s dialogue
themes. Taken together, Bohm’s original booklet and these secondary
materials have more or less defined the field of dialogue for an entire
generation of enthusiasts.
This contextual gap between “shorthand” dialogue and Bohm’s
larger themes helps to clarify his suggestion that “people need to do
more work on their own.” Bohm was likely signaling the need to
reintegrate the shorthand dialogue vision with its origin – that is, a
keen and sustained awareness of the movement of the ego in daily life. Working
outside the dialogue setting, and bringing the fruit of that inquiry back into
the group, might provide the missing element that could bring dialogue to its
full potential.
THREE ASPECTS OF WHOLENESS
In attempting to re-establish the wholeness of Bohm’s vision, we will
examine three areas that are often absent from popular presentations of
dialogue. Though hardly exhaustive, this short list – the self-image, the
body, and meaning - will perhaps give some indication of the richness of
inquiry that is available to those interested in the full scope of Bohm’s
inquiry. As outlined here, these three areas are explored as they might look if
a person were to work “on their own.” How this exploration might
look in the context of a dialogue group is a fascinating topic, perhaps one to
be pursued in a later essay.
The Self-Image
The first area is self-image, or ego. As it will be discussed here, ego is not
necessarily a chest-beating, get-out-of-my-way-I’m-the-best-in-the-world
mentality. Rather, basic ego, or self-image, is simply the sense that wherever
I go, whatever I do, whatever I think, there is a portable “me”
that is always there – the very one who goes, does, and thinks. This
sense of “me” as an essential and indispensable interior entity
seems to form the basis for our existence in the world; all aspects of
experience are felt to flow from it, and refer back to it.
Coexistent with this sense of “me” is an enormous cache of values,
views, assumptions, aspirations, struggles, desires, and fears, any one of
which may act as the vanguard for the entire ego structure. In Bohm’s
view, this content of the self-image is identical with our image of “the
world” – any value or assumption that is experienced internally has
an external correlate, usually perceived as “how things are.” If I
see the driver in the lane next to me as bumbling and incompetent, this would
be reflected inwardly by a tacit image of myself as a skillful and responsive
driver. These two apparently different images are actually as inseparable from
one another as one side of a brick is from the other side. Bohm’s term
for this mutually dependent structuring was “self-world view.” In
the remainder of this essay we will thus use the terms ego, self-image, and
self-world view interchangeably.
In contemporary Western civilization, examination of the self-image is
predominantly oriented toward some version of ego-modification. From this
perspective, the basic structure and value of the ego is taken for granted, the
operative question being whether or not my ego is in satisfactory condition. If
it is not in satisfactory condition, I will follow some kind of methodology for
bringing it more in line with how I want it to be. If my ego desires to
perceive itself as slim, fit, and sexually attractive, I will diet, exercise,
or perhaps have some reconstructive surgery. If the ego desires to perceive
itself as powerful and lordly, it will perhaps go through the machinations of
establishing a business venture with many employees and a visible impact on
society. If the ego desires to perceive itself as spiritual in nature, it may
learn how to meditate and bask in the glow of its newfound spirituality.
It is of course possible that any of these activities can be undertaken from a
benign or practical standpoint, rather than from strictly ego-driven purposes.
I might exercise for sheer physical exuberance. I might start a business out of
necessity or simple interest. I might learn to meditate out of a genuine
inspiration to achieve clarity and understanding. But more often than not, our
motivations and goals are infused with the potent tinge of basic ego, like the
cartoon character Snoopy: “Here’s the up-and-coming entrepreneur,
well on her way to impressive accomplishments and a daunting reputation,”
or equally, “Here’s the down-on-his-luck jilted lover, taking
solace in well-warranted existential angst.” Whatever your scenario of
the day, there is no great mystery in this aspect of our experience. We all
know what this ego is and how it operates; we all know we “have”
one, and we all know everyone else “has” one.
From a Bohmian perspective, our deepest, unarticulated assumptions about this
ego process are called into question. But unlike many other lines of
contemporary discourse, Bohm’s approach is distinctly not a process of
reformulating or redirecting the ego, shuffling and substituting one image for
another in endless succession. Nor is this questioning an intellectual pastime
intended to discuss some novel, avant-garde theory of the ego. Finally, it is
most certainly not a game of “Gotcha!” in which the inevitable
display of ego-structures is seized upon as a dialogical prize.
In what way, then, does Bohm ask us to question the ego? To begin with, he
suggests that we loosen our assumption that the ego is a real thing. He
proposes that the self-image may be a kind of imaginary display, a fantasy
character used to give coherence to the massive amount of stimulation that
floods us every second. He often referred to the ego as a “thought
god,” analogous to the “rain gods” we sometimes find in
various ancient or aboriginal cultures. By this he meant that peoples such as
the ancient Greeks seemed to have looked for a simple way of explaining the
vicissitudes of rain, thunder, and lightning, and came to the conclusion that
there was an entity – a rain god – who was behind the scenes,
causing weather to happen. Similarly, in the midst of the constant flow of
thoughts and impressions that make up our consciousness, we yearn for
continuity and coherence, and thus project an image of “me” –
a thought god behind the scenes, causing thought to happen. This attribution,
of course, is not spontaneously invented anew with every person. We receive
ample help from our social environment when we are very young, learning
unconsciously how to construct this sense of inner entity and invest it with
meaning.
But what if the self-image is really only “there” when we look for
it (continuously), think about it (compulsively), remember it (reflexively)?
What if the feeling of “me” is a product of the flow of thoughts,
rather than the source of them?
In most of the literature available on dialogue, Bohm uses the term
“assumptions” to signify the activity by which the ego navigates
the world.. He of course recognizes that from a common-sense, practical
perspective we need to have certain working assumptions. We must assume that
our car is likely to start when we go to work in the morning; we must assume
that our circle of friends and relations is at least somewhat reliable and
stable. But navigating the physical and social world via practical assumptions
is not what causes most of the confusion and difficulty in our lives. It is,
rather, our assumptions about who we really are, and how the world should be in
relation to us, that cause us frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction.
However, the shorthand language of contemporary dialogue discourse tends to
leave intact the most basic assumption of all – the assumption of the
solidity and primacy of the ego. In marginalizing sustained and pointed
questioning of the ego per se, the current dialogue discourse leaves open a
stance in which one may question all manner of one’s own assumptions, and
the assumptions of others, but rarely if ever question the basic existence or
seeming solidity of the ego itself.
We could think of this version of questioning assumptions as serial-horizontal.
In this approach we question assumptions in a perpetual sequence, as though we
were driving along a flat desert highway, “questioning” each new
item that appears through the windshield. This process is indeed central to the
practice of dialogue, and is by any measure a valuable and enlightening
exercise. But our minds tend to be organized in such fashion that the loosening
of one strongly held assumption will eventually be followed by the
strengthening of another one, or the re-emergence of the old one in a new
guise. We can go on this way for years, perhaps a lifetime, examining the
topical features of the ongoing parade of assumptions that passes through our
consciousness. All the while, the ego – the “mother of all
assumptions” – remains conveniently shielded from scrutiny by
tacitly positioning itself as the one who is examining the serial assumptions.
But if we sense that this approach could indeed go on endlessly without really
revealing the core of our problems, then we may be inspired to explore an
alternative. Amply provided in Bohm’s larger body of work is a
complementary approach to assumptions, one which is holistic rather than
serial, vertical in addition to horizontal. This holistic-vertical questioning
of assumptions is more akin to an archaeological dig, in which we stay with one
assumption in a sustained way, ferreting out its generic structure, rather than
simply surveying its topically salient features.
In a serial approach, I might examine my ingrained prejudice against very fat
people who live in trailer parks. If I am persistent and sincere, I might gain
insight into the causes and limitations of this prejudice, and thus free myself
to a greater or lesser extent from this prejudice. Next week, I might examine
my assumptions about the motives and intentions of CEOs of multinational
corporations. Through this examination, I will perhaps uncover various
fallacies, and arrive at a less restrictive view of such individuals.
In a holistic approach, I may well engage in exactly these serial processes,
but with one additional, and crucial, hypothesis: Each particular prejudice or
assumption I examine in sequence is but a temporary display – an
advertisement, if you will – a of a deeper generating source: the sense
of ego itself. From this perspective, to ignore my deep assumptions about the
existence and veracity of the ego, in favor of examining its display du jour,
is very likely to result in an endless recycling of modified assumptions. But if
I am willing to see the particular assumptions/displays as flags indicating the
more generic patterning of the ego, it may be possible to enter into a
genuinely new order of insight. In addition to questioning the assumption, we
are now questioning the questioner.
The Body
In exploring the terrain of the self-image, it is all too easy to slip into a
highly abstract and intellectualized version of our experience. As suggested in
the previous section, being “aware” of assumptions can become a
repetitive habit like any other, a closed intellectual loop that never proceeds
significantly beyond the surface of experience. As a complement to the initial
emphasis on “thinking through” the nature of the self-world view
and its assumptive process, Bohm proposes that we use the body as a source of
immediate, concrete feedback for our inquiry. While this emphasis on the body
is fairly apparent in Bohm’s source material on dialogue, the secondary
literature has tended to minimize or altogether eliminate this aspect of the
dialogue process. In this section we will review in some detail why Bohm sees
the body as an indispensable component in deepening our understanding of both
ego and dialogue.
The most immediate way we can utilize the body – both in and out of the
dialogue process – is to recognize the body as a highly sensitive and
accurate display for disturbances to the self-image. To do this, Bohm suggests
that we expand our attention – usually focused on our mental reactions
arising from provocations to the ego – to include the physiological
correlates of these reactions. These correlates are not mysteriously hidden
away; they are readily apparent if we are open to seeing them. Consider, for
example, that one of my core values – women have the right to choose
whether to abort a fetus – is vehemently challenged. In addition to my
likely thoughts about the challenger (“This person is venal and
reactionary…he is only concerned about imposing his views on
others…at the very least he is misguided and ignorant”), I will also
have a cluster of physical signs of disturbance. My heart may begin to beat
faster. My adrenaline may begin to surge. My jaw may subtly clench. My posture
may rigidify.
In normal social intercourse, we may (a) ignore these physiological signals
through force of habit (b) bulldoze our way past them in order to find a new
zone of equilibrium (c) take them as implicit proof of the rightness of our
position. In all such cases we tend to fall into the default mode of thinking
our way forward – we marshal an array of intellectual arguments and
justifications for why our view is right and good, and why the
challenger’s view is wrong and bad.
However, in such a scenario there is always a phase in which both aspects
– the physiological manifestations and the internal verbal cogitation
– are simultaneously present. Bohm’s suggestion is that at this
very point, we experiment with diminishing our reliance on the “thinking
habit,” and allow the physiological correlates to come more clearly into
felt awareness. This in no sense means suppressing the thoughts, but something
more like a figure-ground reversal, in which our typical structure of our
awareness – with thoughts far more dominant than our physiology –
is reversed, with the physiological responses now coming to the foreground.
There are a number of reasons Bohm suggests experimenting with this
figure-ground reversal, and a comprehensive assessment of them all is well
beyond the scope of this essay. But two points in particular warrant scrutiny.
First, there is the “truthfulness” aspect of the body. Honest
attention to the signals in the body will often give a very different picture
of what is happening in our experience than the ego would like to imagine. If
someone has said something that has hurt or offended us deeply, we have a
lifetime of practice at acting outwardly as if this hurt did not occur. And
once this process of obscuration is set in motion, we often go so far as to
deny – even to ourselves – that we are hurt. But close, sustained attention
to the body, alert to signals like those mentioned above, makes it difficult to
maintain the habit of obscuring the actual nature of our experience. One effect
of giving attention to the body is thus to bring our conscious awareness more
closely in line with what is actually occurring.
Second, as we attempt to read the information of the body, and move toward
closer alignment between what is actually happening and what we would like to
think is happening, we will inevitably encounter a certain degree of conflict.
This conflict is directly attributable to physiological information that is
contrary to my self-image. My body tells me that the attitudes and words of a
person I am in interaction with frighten and threaten me. But the self-image
says, “This is absurd. I shouldn’t be threatened by this person or
their views. I can’t be weak or vulnerable. I must find a way to regain
my solid ground.”
It is exactly the structure of this experience, and its many variations (which
include the seemingly opposite experience of gratified self-validation), that
can lead us to the edge of the generic self-world view and open the possibility
of an entirely new way of relating to ourselves and others. For in such moments
we have a vividly clear display of the inner mechanism by which the ego
sustains itself and its fixed views of the world.
On the one hand we have the body and all that it is signifying: uncomfortable
impulses, uninvited surges of energy, uncharitable thoughts and images, all
swirling and mixing in a dynamic that is, at least inwardly, out of control. On
the other hand there is the apparently stable and unchanging “internal
watcher,” the one who notices these bodily signals and either approves or
disapproves of them, directing or redirecting energy until some satisfactory
equilibrium is found (this “watcher,” not coincidentally, is
identical with the “questioner” we visited earlier). In trying to
clarify the nature of what is happening in such moments, our first task is
simply to be distinctly aware of these two processes: the movement of energy
and impulses, and the sense of an internal entity who is watching these.
We are now in a position to notice a subtle but palpable oscillation of
neurophysiological energy that occurs when the “observer” attempts
to categorize, judge, alter, redirect, validate, or suppress the display in the
body. With a bit of persistence, it becomes increasingly natural and easy to
tune in to this oscillation. It is sensed as a kind of “extra” or
“added” impulse, often in conflict with that of the initial bodily
responses. One variation of this would be the case of self-justification or
validation, where the bodily display would be “sanctioned “ by the
watcher – in which case the added impulse would likely be one of pleasure
rather than conflict. But in either case the relevant factor is the reflexive
emergence of the “extra” impulse, not whether it is conflictual or
pleasurable.
Once we acquire some familiarity with this dynamic, we can experiment with what
happens if we do not sanction the impulse to categorize or act upon what is
displayed in the body. We may instead simply be aware of the whole of what is
going on: the initial thinking habit, the initial physiological correlates, and
the emergence of a watcher which injects an additional level of discernable
energy. In this case, “being aware” arises from all our faculties
– cognitive, physiological, and affective. We both “see” and
“feel” the simultaneous presence of thoughts, feelings, and the
watcher, but without trusting and following the impulsive interjections of the
watcher.
In this way we arrive at a radically new orientation. Normally in the course of
daily life, we follow the dictates of one of two masters. Either we follow our
random thoughts and urges, or we follow the implicit dictates of the inner
watcher, which monitors the random thoughts and urges, judging and directing
them in one way or other. But now we are watching the watcher, as well as all
else that is happening. This particular awareness is not a disembodied, bird’s-eye,
“objective” view, such as occurs in many kinds of introspective
analysis; nor is it the perspective of a so-called “neutral
watcher,” which is usually nothing more than a shift in positioning of
the ego. To the contrary, this awareness is completely within all that is
occurring. It is alert to all cognitive, physiological, and affective
movements, yet curiously, it also partakes of these movements, and is in some
essential sense grounded in them. Rather than awareness from the “outside
looking in,” this is more akin to awareness from the “inside
looking out.”
The novel, even strange aspect of this approach is the implication that we are
capable of conscious awareness that does not in any fundamental way depend upon
the ego. In large part this seems strange because our culture does not
recognize or assign value to awareness that is decoupled from the ego, much
less provide tools and support for its development. In fact, quite the opposite
is more often the case. We are trained from a very early age to (a) produce
this inner distinction between observer and observed, in which the ego is felt
to be the vital living source of all thought and awareness (b) assume the
validity of this structure so thoroughly that it passes out of conscious
awareness (c) invest total trust in its efficacy. But in our current inquiry,
this deep cultural conditioning is turned on its head: awareness is now seen as
primary; thoughts flow from awareness; and the ego, far from being a
“real thing,” is merely a reflexive display resulting from
ingrained thought patterns.
Interestingly enough, we have ample everyday evidence for awareness that is
decoupled from the self-world view. Moments of shocking beauty in the natural
world, intense sexual communion, deep immersion in work or sport – all of
these indicate a momentary loss of self in which we are nonetheless intensely
aware. But these moments are fortuitous, and are all too easily romanticized or
compartmentalized. When approached in this manner, such awareness is made into
an object of desire by the ego, which invariably resurfaces and reflects
longingly upon these moments. In this way an ironic cycle of confusion is
engendered, in which the absence of the ego is desired by the ego.
Here however, we are suggesting that this same heightened awareness can be
accessed in the midst of our most mundane and taxing moments. Bohm’s
perspective allows us to utilize the generic appearance of the ego itself as a
means of prompting awareness. By using the body to bring to light the oscillation
between the watcher/ego and neurophysiological energy structures, we need no
longer look to “special moments” for an opportunity to prompt basic
awareness. In the act of watching the watcher, awareness is fully present, at
least momentarily.
Further, we can now see a new relationship between serial and holistic
suspension of assumptions. It becomes increasingly clear that the watcher and
the assumption are one and the same structure – they are both products of
thinking. When the watcher is thus no longer given privileged status as a
central entity, but is apprehended by awareness in the same way that any other
assumption would be, the distinction between serial suspension and holistic
suspension collapses. Every serial observation becomes a holistic observation;
the observation of each superficial assumption gives access to the entire
generic movement of the ego process, rather than to some isolated fragment of
this process.
From this inclusive Bohmian perspective, we thus find that the body is the gateway
to a remarkable wealth of unexpected information. Clearly, if we marginalize
and downplay the significance of the body, we lose access to this information.
But new information, in and of itself, can be meaningless. What then are we to
make of this new information? What, if anything, does it have to tell us?
Meaning
“A change of meaning is a change of being.” Increasingly in his
latter years, Bohm was fond of broaching and contemplating this statement. It
is an enigmatic statement, not least because the words meaning and being are
notoriously difficult to define. If asked to define them, we may come up short
for a verbal definition, yet still have an intuitive sense that we know what
they mean, a kind of feeling for what they actually refer to in our experience.
At the very least, “meaning” seems to suggest something of value or
significance – people, places, events, or ideas that are in some way
important in our lives. And at the very least, “being” seems to
point to our actual existence, our sense of presence and vitality.
In following through Bohm’s proposal that our self-image is inseparable
from our view of the world, and that this mutually arising “self-world
view” is the operant basis of our experience, we now come to a pivotal
question: If the demands of the self-world view can dissipate, even if only in
short bursts, what are the implications for our meanings and our being?
Bohm has suggested one possibility – that rather than clinging to
fragmentation, isolation, and territoriality, we might begin to discern a
participatory universe, one in which conceptual boundaries and sharp
definitions are tools for use in the moment, rather than serving as
crystallized identity structures. Perhaps in such a participatory universe,
communion and fellowship are natural features of the topography. Perhaps in
such a universe, intrinsic human warmth – currently locked down or
carefully channeled in so many of us – is common currency, part of the
shared meaning of nature and society.
If Bohm is even partly right when he claims that the mind-body continuum is
concretely related to the deepest orders of the universe, then a change of
meaning may open us to these orders, bringing us face to face with new aspects
of being that are only vaguely intimated by our current world view. It is up to
each individual to then ask: Do I want to live the rest of my life playing out
yet another variation of contemporary values? Am I willing to test the
boundaries of my self-world view, in order to glimpse a larger, perhaps very
different universe? Am I willing to take risks for the possibility of new
understanding, knowing there can be no money-back guarantee?
Such questions lie at the heart of Bohmian dialogue – not as fad or
theory, but as the deepest promptings of our humanity. To the extent that
questions of this order are ignored in favor of technique, it is perhaps
inevitable that Bohm’s vision of dialogue will degenerate into the
algorithms of the workshop and seminar circuit. But if such questions can be
revisited and revitalized, then this vision may still find good soil and
contribute to a new and radical creativity.
©2001 Lee Nichol
