Bohm
Well, last night we were sort of making preliminary discussion and discussing the question of meaning, what is meaning, and also the question of dialogue versus discussion—that is, a discussion is like passing the meaning back and forth, like a ball, and the dialogue would be something different. It had the idea of something flowing through in it, the meaning flowing through from its root. And you may think of a stream and see, in the case of the dialogue, we are like the banks of the stream, or somewhere in the stream, participating in the stream rather than passing the stream of meaning, rather than passing this thing back and forth. And both of them have their place, obviously. We must have a difference according to the occasion. We may have one or the other.
I hope we’ll be able to discuss later more of the difference between dialogue and discussion. One point that I can make now is that, in a discussion, we often find that people feel the urge to get in very fast, because if they wait too long, somebody else will get in, and the whole topic will change, and it will be too late. And this makes a problem. So it creates some kind of tension and interferes with the relationship between people. It tends to create an urge to be sure you present your own point of view. Some people don’t feel able to do so and they, gradually, they feel unable to get involved. At least they may listen, but they can’t seem to take part more than that.
Now, in a dialogue, which really requires a lot of skill when there are many people, people will learn without having to think about it to slow down. So giving a pause, giving time not only for everybody to get in who wants to get in, but also to assimilate or absorb the meaning of what has been said. Otherwise, sometimes you have, in a discussion, somebody sees an interesting point, he starts to think about it. Meanwhile, other people talk along another line, and he has missed it all, you see. So he hasn’t had time to assimilate the thing. And you get all these problems in a discussion.
Now, there are many other differences between dialogue and discussion which we can explore, perhaps, later. But I think the plan I was proposing for today is: I’ll just go say some things for a while in order to present something, and we will discuss it the next hour. And then, in the afternoon, you’ll have a chance to talk in smaller groups, which I find is a very useful thing. Many people can talk much more easily in smaller groups than in larger groups, and they can sort of work out some of the things that were not worked out.
Now, we’ll also be able to learn to see some of the difference of smaller and larger groups and raise the question: why is it so hard to talk in a larger group? You see? Which is a very important question if people are really to make work together, or to create a good society, or anything we want to do.
For example, democracy means people must be able to talk together. In the ancient Greek democracy, in principle, everybody, I suppose, got in the amphitheater. Everybody had a vote—at least all those who were citizens. But of course it wasn’t ideal, either. It is one of the problems of human organization, of human society. And dialogue is really—implicitly, at least—addressed to that. So it has a very broad significance—even broader than that. We’ll discuss as we go along.
Now I’d like to return, then, to—we were discussing meaning, and saying meaning is being according to what something means to you, especially if it has a great deal of meaning, and that is what you are, you see. Because if something means something to you, it has high value, first of all, right? Now, we said meaning also involves disposition to act. So the minute you have seen a meaning or have a meaning, then you’re disposed to act accordingly without further consideration. That disposition to act is more or less like a reaction that will proceed without consciousness. It should be capable of being conscious. If you find it isn’t working, then you should be able to see that it’s not working and change it, just find out what’s behind it and change it. But in fact we find that we start taking it for granted and are unconscious of it, and are unable to change it. It’s a very frequent occurrence. So that’s very important, because if we can’t change our disposition in an intelligent way, then we will be stuck with irrelevant dispositions; you know, doing things wrongly.
So the meaning acts, you see, the meaning is not just something abstract, but it is unfolding and acting. The meaning unfolds into the whole physical state of the body. We were saying that if you see a shadow in a dark night, if it means an assailant to you—according to what you have heard; there are a lot of assailants around—then your blood goes, you know, the heart beats faster, the blood pressure rises, the adrenaline, all sorts of neurochemicals are set in action in the nervous system. Its whole state is altered. You may become very alert, or perhaps frightened and tense, and the muscles ready to do something. If you then see it and just take another look and say it doesn’t mean an assailant anymore, it means a shadow, then it’s all gone.
So the whole state of the body depends on meaning. The whole state of society depends on meaning. You see, if somebody is an enemy, means an enemy, then you have a certain attitude or disposition. If somebody is a friend, it’s another one. You see, if you say certain people are of a lower class or a higher class, you are disposed accordingly. And once that is set up, people find it extremely hard to get out of those fixed dispositions. If you say, “This money means a great deal to me”—in our society, money means a great deal, tTherefore we are disposed to get money, to hold money, to worry about money. It becomes a very large part of our lives, right? In another society, money may mean nothing, but something else may mean something. It may be that status in another society is the key thing; then everybody is disposed to get status. Or it may be the status is fixed in a hereditary way; then he’s disposed to accept all that and to try to do the best he can in his own group, in his own class.
So you can see now: according to what things mean, the society is organized, and that’s what the society is, that’s what the individual is. See, if there’s a change of meaning, there’s a change of being, right? But we have a tradition, an assumption, that meaning is one thing and being is another; that we are certain things. And then, besides that, we see how things mean to us. And then, from that basis, we choose to be different or act differently. Is that clear what I mean?
Now, I’m questioning that. I’m saying that in most cases, meaning acts immediately without such a choice. It acts as a disposition. And this creates a problem, because we don’t realize how we are conditioned by all those meanings. You see, that is the conditioning.
Now, therefore, I’m saying that it would be useful to go somewhat into: what is meaning? How it works. Meaning is not merely something very abstract, it works, right? It’s an activity. It’s very pervasive. It works in the body, it works in the chemicals of the blood, it works in the society.
Audience
Could one then describe meaning as something akin to a psychological attitude?
Bohm
Meaning is part of that. The disposition is an attitude, you see. Attitude is another word for disposition, right? You see, if you are disposed, you are ready for a certain kind of action. An attitude means being ready, a certain approach, right? You see, if you think—the military used the word to dispose soldiers in a certain arrangement, right? So they’re expecting an attack from a certain direction, so their soldiers are disposed that way. But if the attack comes from the other way, they’re disposed wrongly, they really will be defeated, right?
So therefore you have to have a disposition—you set up a disposition according to what the situation means to you. You see, the commander sees the situation and it means that the enemy is going to attack from there, but he’s disposed to meet that attack and the enemy may attack from the other side, right? So that’s a totally inadequate disposition, a wrong one.
Now, if you’re wrongly disposed, you’re going to be disorganized in action. But then, if you can’t change that, you’re lost, right? If the commander says that’s the only disposition I know, that’s the one I was taught in the book, that’s too bad. So, therefore, you have to be observant, ready to change the disposition according to the new meaning of the situation as you perceive it. An attitude is essentially another word for a disposition. Or an approach is a kind of disposition too, right?
Audience
Would you then describe it as a—well, it is, of course, based on an assumption of future action.
Bohm
Well, before that, an assumption of what the present situation is.
Audience
Or that also.
Bohm
Your action follows from what the situation is, right? If the commander assumes the enemy—well, if you say the enemy is back there, we can make assumptions of what he will do, but also as to what power he’s got right now and so on. Now, if you make the wrong assumptions about the power he’s got, you again have a wrong disposition, you see.
Audience
Are you saying that meaning is always within a context?
Bohm
Yes, all meaning is within a context. And that context, in turn, is a meaning, a broader meaning, and so on. So there’s no limit to meaning. It’s always sort of floating in an indefinite context that eventually you can’t define, right?
Audience
But the problem that I have is: does the meaning lie in the overall situation itself? Or does it primarily lie in the mind of the observer? Or is it an unseparated whole?
Bohm
Well, those are three possibilities we must explore. But I would suggest that it’s really a whole. But it’s common to separate them. That’s another meaning: to say that’s the meaning of meaning, right? You’re asking a question about the meaning of meaning, right?
Audience
It seems to also imply that the context is never fixed.
Bohm
Yes, that’s true. You see, the context is indefinitely extending and not fixed, right? But then we have a tendency to assume the meanings are fixed, or to fall into a disposition to fix the meanings. Now, you see, according to the dictionary, a habit is nothing but a fixed disposition. So we may need habits, but it depends on how thoroughly they are fixed. If they’re fixed so thoroughly we can’t change them, then they’re really impediments.
Audience
Seeing what actually is and implies an awareness of the totality.
Bohm
Well, it will, but we have to sort of get into it, you see. I mean, I think we want not only to get into it, but able to communicate about it.
So you have all this field of meaning, which really is not separable from the field of what is. Meaning is part of what is. Suppose you say there is what is—that which is—and besides that, there is the meaning we have about that which is. That’s a common way of thinking. But the meaning we have about that which is is an inseparable part of that which is. It’s very active. It may transform that which is, or it may prevent its transformation.
Audience
We separate meaning from what is, don’t we?
Bohm
That’s what I said, yes. That’s true.
Audience
That’s where the problems come in.
Bohm
Yes, but that’s a wrong meaning, you see. I’m questioning—we say what is, we say the world means to us this, that there is what is and there is meaning. That’s part of the meaning of meaning, that we have a wrong meaning of meaning.
Audience
So we’re looking at it wrongly?
Bohm
What?
Audience
We’re looking at that in a wrong… in a wrong way?
Bohm
Yes, but not consciously, because it’s part of the culture. You see, we have absorbed that from the very beginning without being told we’re absorbing it, right? Without even knowing it’s happening. Just as you absorb your accent, right? Each one of us has a certain accent in speaking English, and we don’t know we have it, and if we all speak the same we will never know, right?
Audience
Are you saying our very perception of the world around us is affecting the world around us?
Bohm
Yes. And that depends on what it means. Our perception of the meaning of the world affects the world. It affects what we do with the world, certainly. It affects ourselves.
Audience
Okay, so it affects the world in reaction rather than—
Bohm
Well, this is what we’re taking as a fact. I mean, whether there’s another effect, I don’t know. But it’s a plain fact that it affects the body. It affects what the body does. It affects how we communicate. It affects how we make up the society. It affects what we do with the whole of nature and the environment. See, if the world means to us a lot of things that are to be exploited, it means we will break it up that way. We will exploit it. We will produce pollution. We will, you know, destroy the forests and the oceans and so on. So, you see, these vast effects come from what it means, right?
Now, in earlier cultures, the world did not mean that. It meant somewhere where you preserved nature, worked with nature, and produced a different kind of world, right? So now this meaning developed in our culture; that nature was there for our exploitation, right? It was part of the idea that nature is separate from us, and that nature meant one thing and [???] another. You see, all of that, there’s a whole—that depends on other meanings that go further back.
If you take the Bible, somewhere in there it said that God set up everything for man to use, right? Now, people then carried that to an extreme and said, well, we can do whatever we like with the world. It was set up there for us. Right? It’s God’s will. I mean, we’re not…. So that’s what it means to us, right? The will of God—well, it’s something you’ve got to do, right? It turns out you’re doing—the will of God turns out to be the same as my will, so that’s a particularly happy situation.
Audience
And, of course, God’s will itself must be the ultimate meaning.
Bohm
Yeah. Well, that’s the supreme meaning, right?
Audience
Yeah.
Bohm
Many people have ultimate meanings and they’re all different, right? Therefore, people must fight about them and can never agree. You see, if you have an ultimate meaning, you cannot possibly agree with the other person who has a different ultimate meaning. You must either politely tolerate each other or fight to the death, right? And religions have adopted both attitudes, right? At times they tolerate each other, other times they fight to the death. It’s inevitable, you see. It’s built into that. You have the supreme meaning, right? The supreme value.
See, meaning is also inseparable from value. Value has the same root as “valor,” “valiant.” It represents a kind of strength, right? Something of great value will produce a very powerful urge or strength within the person. It arouses that, right?
Audience
All this meaning arises out of something. It doesn’t float through the air by itself. And that something is the basic assumption, or the basic meaning, that gives rise to all other meanings.
Bohm
Yeah, that may be, but we haven’t—you know, what is it?
Audience
Well… right.
Bohm
You see, many people have made assumptions about what that is. And this is where the great danger is. You see, I’m not saying we shouldn’t find out what it is, but to be too ready to assign ultimate meaning to something is very dangerous, you see.
Audience
I would say ultimate assumption.
Bohm
Yeah, but you’re assuming an ultimate meaning then. You see, assumptions have meaning, right? You see, if an assumption had no meaning, what would you say about it? You see, an assumption is a set of words, and the words have meaning, right?
Audience
The words are given meaning by us.
Bohm
I don’t think we do that. You see, I think we’re not conscious of how they get meaning.
Audience
Then how is it that we have different meaning?
Bohm
Because we have different backgrounds, each one of us comes from a different subculture, different conditions, and there’s a very rich combination. You see, there’s a word, a very useful word: “idiosyncrasy”—Greek root—which means “private mixture.” There’s a vast set of meanings floating around in society, and each person may pick up some of them. Another person, a somewhat different set, according to his background, his predilections, his particular physical constitution, his hormonal constitution, a thousand different things will bring about a different way of picking up meanings. So also, you see, if you grow up in a Christian society, you’re very likely to pick up the Christian meanings. In a Mohammedan society, you see, very few pick up Christian meanings if they live in a purely Mohammedan society, and so on.
So therefore, according to this very complex structure of flow of meaning and background, each person picks up a set of meanings. Now, he’s not conscious of most of them, and he tries to work consciously with those he can. But he’s really at the mercy of all those meanings for the most part. See, since he doesn’t know he’s got them, they work through dispositions, you see? Through attitudes. And you have this flow of meaning. That is the conditioning, really. That’s the kind of conditioning which we’re talking about, anyway.
Audience
If we had a great new machine that would send out… whatever, that would give everybody the same meaning, what do you envision?
Bohm
Well, I don’t know. I don’t think everybody would take the same meaning from this machine. You see, this machine would produce a complex meaning, and different people would take different things out of it. Unless it were just one simple message, and everybody would all take it.
You see, if you go to Nazi Germany, they had some very simple messages, which most of the people took, right? Very powerful messages. Very tremendous value. You see, there’s a song, a patriotic song they used to have there—I think they’ve given it up, fortunately—which was “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” It means: “Germany above all.” What does that mean, right? Very simple meaning, but it gives tremendous value to Germany, overriding all other values, A supreme value, right? It literally says Germany is the supreme value. Now, every nation tacitly says that. This was really an extraordinarily effective way of saying it with a very nice music by Haydn.
Audience
I think it was the emperor string quartet.
Bohm
What?
Audience
The emperor. It’s called the emperor quartet. It provides the music.
Bohm
Yeah. But, I mean, it was really an extraordinarily effective way of doing it. But still, every nation does it in its own way. But then the Nazis carried it a lot further, you know, like saying—I can’t remember what Hitler said. “One folk, one people.”
Audience
Yeah. Ein Volk, ein Reich means “one people, one realm (or empire), and one leader.”
Bohm
Yeah, so that word, “one,” repeated. One, one, one, right? A tremendous meaning there. It overrides everything, right?
Audience
We could probably presume that we are here looking for the one correct ultimate meaning.
Bohm
Well, whether there is or not, I don’t know. But you can see—you have to watch this very carefully, right? You see? It carries tremendous power. And it’s tacit: we don’t know it’s there.
Audience
Where does the origin of all these meanings go back in human history? You know, wWe have all these complex meanings of different religions and everything. I guess we just don’t have the history to go back to where this all began.
Bohm
No, I don’t think we do. The nearest I can think of is to look up the derivation of words in the dictionary. I regard that as the archaeology of the thought process. You see, you get insight into how it developed by these derivations how meanings developed.
Audience
What’s the derivation of meaning?
Bohm
Yes, I don’t remember it right now, but Meinung is a German word, but it’s not the same as the English “meaning.” It’s sort of an opinion, isn’t it? And I forget exactly what it is, but you have “significance,” its meaning is clear: signify, to make a sign, to point. Right? And you have “value,” “strength.” And you have “intention” or “purpose” as part of meaning. And so it’s not too clear to me what the—I looked it up, but I wasn’t too clear. Many of these derivations are very obscure, you see, and I don’t remember them. But you can’t count on them all. It’s sort of something you don’t take literally. You say on the whole it’s instructive, but you mustn’t take each one too literally.
Audience
[???] the meaning and perception and assumption, say, with a lower animal—not a human species, but a lower animal—that would sort of simplify. There’s meaning to a dog when it sees food and so on, but there isn’t the psychological reaction. Would you give it [???]
Bohm
Yeah, well, clearly a dog has meaning of all sorts. I’ll say you’re his friend or his enemy, and, you know, and the emotional level of the dog—or the chimpanzee, especially—is probably not very different from us. A chimpanzee is said to be intellectually at the level of a two-year-old child, but emotionally it’s probably very much like we are. In other words, I think this is more or less the level of the human being.
Yeah?
Audience
The suggestion is that, because of our conditioning, we are inclined to give meaning to everything, or look for meaning. I wonder if we shouldn’t question why we give meaning to anything. For example, this question: what is the meaning of life? Why do we have to have a meaning to life, or to anything?
Bohm
Well, that’s a question you can raise, but people do want to give meaning, and in most areas it’s important to give meaning, you see, because the meaning is what determines what we’ll do with it. You see, if the forest means to us a place to be preserved, it’s one thing. If it means to us a place to be exploited, it’s another, you see. That if people of another race mean to us inferior, that’s one thing. If it means all human beings are one, that’s another meaning, right? So all around it’s necessary to give meaning. Or even, science is based on giving meanings to all sorts of things, like force and mass and so on.
Now then, inevitably, people will ask: what does the word “life” mean? You see, every word, we can say this living being, that living being, that living being, right? There’s animals, there’s people, there’s flowers, there’s trees. So then we have the word “life” and say: what does that mean? Now, it may mean nothing, it may mean something. We have to explore it.
Audience
Isn’t that self-evident?
Bohm
What?
Audience
That we have to sort of analyze it?
Bohm
Well, it’s not clear necessarily, because people—for example, scientists are saying: where does life begin? How does inanimate matter become animate? What [is] the potential of life? Is life individual or is it collective? Many questions arise.
Audience
But also—pardon me—if something perhaps stops making sense, if there’s a disturbance in a way, and say life stops making sense in an area, from out of that one might ask: well, this is meaningless. And then from there, you might say: well, what is the meaning?
Bohm
Yeah. That’s a problem that arises, you see, and all societies have had it—our society, too—and that many people feel life has lost its meaning, which that means its value and its purpose, right? That’s in the sense.
Now then, this is ancient. Because in the Bible, Ecclesiastes said: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” Right? So people have felt that way for a very long time, from time to time, saying: what is the point of life? The purpose point is part of the meaning. Now then, somebody may say: God gives meaning to life. Or life has its own meaning. Or all sorts of answers have been given, you see. But I think at this stage we don’t have to choose or decide any of this, but just simply we’re sort of exploring the psyche, how it works, what people have been doing.
Audience
I think what I’m suggesting that I think the question itself might not even arise unless there was a disturbance.
Bohm
That may be, yes. But then that may be the question wouldn’t arise without a disturbance. But still, the question has arisen.
Audience
All of this meaning that we’re talking about, it seems to me, is a meaning from standing outside of. That what was suggested here is that, when that standing outside isn’t taking place, then there may be a meaning which is evident, but that’s just conjecture.
Bohm
That may be. Yes, the point is we want to—that’s a conjecture, an assumption, right? You know, a proposal. But we want to say: what can we do? You know, saying: proceed further. That you’ve got all these questions of meaning which really concern people, right? And we want to understand. You see, we’re not trying to make a judgment about whether it’s right or wrong, but simply to understand the meaning of all of it. You see, I don’t think you can get out of the field of meaning, because everything is a kind of meaning. Whatever you know or whatever you feel or perceive is a meaning, right?
Audience
Doesn’t it seem, though, like we have put ourselves in a position where then that question follows, but first we have put ourselves in the position of standing outside?
Bohm
Well, we didn’t do that ourselves. You see, I think it happened because of the whole of history. We didn’t choose to do this. We weren’t even aware that it was happening, right? It’s a part of a process that’s going on, which we’re sort of immersed in. You see, it happens whether you like it or not. If you’re not aware of what meaning is and how it works, this is going to happen.
Audience
Which means we are part of a larger context, and that context provides us already with a certain meaning.
Bohm
Yes, that’s right. And then that meaning provides us with a disposition and attitude and a whole set of reactions.
Audience
So is there an ultimate context?
Bohm
Yeah, we don’t know what it is. You see, we’re just simply saying it fades off into something unknown. So I’m saying let’s look at meaning as a process. I’m suggesting we have usually taken meaning for granted, and saying it’s just something—or else it’s very abstract and ethereal and mental. I’m saying it’s a process which is as much physical as mental, as much chemical, neurophysiological, and so on. It really has no limit.
Yeah?
Audience
Yes, I would like to point out something that, in observing just recently in this room, our own reactions to the fact that chimpanzees are emotionally at the level of human beings, and the laughter that emanates from that, and that looking at animals, let’s say, as a lower form of life, and human beings are the, you know, a higher form of life, or looking at that division, that we could simply ask: why is that laughter taking place? To look at chimpanzees as less than—you know, human beings are the same as chimpanzees. Why is that laughter taking place? I mean, this is a very substantial right here example of the meaning that we attach to things.
Bohm
Yes. You see, the point is that we have a meaning that human beings are the highest known form of life, the most intelligent and most developed, and whenever we find out something that doesn’t fit that, we feel uncomfortable. And therefore, laughter will discharge that discomfort, you see.
Audience
But that’s already a disposition to—I mean, that meaning is already there, which disposed that feeling of laughter and discomfort which is coming from that division between an animal who is a separate form of life, not seeing life as the totality, and simply being part of that totality, but seeing that division, having the meaning of division there.
Bohm
Yes, that’s true, yes. The way we divide things is very crucial. You see, that raises the question of fragmentation. You see, we divide things that really are not divisible. You see, we must divide things up for convenience—like dividing fields up according to what’s there, dividing up all sorts of things, and dividing one room from another and so on, separating and distinguishing one person from another. But we may then start to divide what is not really divisible. And that I call fragmentation.
You see, the word “fragment” really means—its root is “to smash,” you see. So if you imagine taking a watch, you could find its parts; but if you smashed it, you would get fragments, not parts. You divide it in irrelevant ways, right, and break it up. See, if the world means a lot of separate places and people and so on, even though they are really connected, we will start smashing it up and apparently getting a confirmation of the correctness of our meaning—not noticing we have produced that division which we….
See, it’s a self-fulfilling assumption. This is one of the key points: that assumptions may be self-fulfilling. That we get the proof that the assumption is correct as a result of the disposition to act that comes from the assumption. So therefore, then, we say that’s inevitable, you see? Therefore we get trapped in it, right—say the divisions between nations are of that nature. There’s no real division in the country or not much in the people, yet you have this tremendous barrier at the frontier and all the differences. So we now say: look at how different all these nations are. That’s proof that our assumptions are correct. But, you see, we ourselves have produced it out of the assumptions, you see. So that shows the power of meaning in the whole of this activity.
Now, I wanted to say one or two more things. You see, in order to emphasize the physical and the mental being one, many scientists have introduced the word “psychosomatic” now, meaning “mind and body,” right? “Psyche” is mind and “soma” is body. Now that, however, has the tendency to produce a fragmentary meaning of saying mind is one thing, matter is another, and they’re sort of different things, and they meet at the boundary somewhere in interaction.
Now, I wanted to introduce another way. Suppose we say: here is something material, it has a form, and this form means something to us, right? Maybe it means a chair, it means a certain material, it means a certain color, a certain strength, all sorts of meanings, right—according to our past experience and according to what we now perceive. And it has a significance, right? Now, so I’m saying I’m going to generalize the idea of matter and call all matter “soma” in order to not make a division of the body from the rest of the world, right? The word “soma,” the way it’s used now, takes just simply the matter of the body, which gives the matter of the body a very great difference from every other form. But, in fact, we know there’s no great difference. It’s constantly exchanging. You see, what was food, what was air, what was water becomes the body and vice versa. So therefore, it’s also exchanging all the time. So I call the one field of matter, call it “soma.” Now I’m saying: the soma—whatever it is, whether in the body or outside—is significant, right? See? So this soma—significance is the word I use for that.
Now then, but it works the other way around. The significance works in matter, you see. If we say that—we gave the example of the shadow on the dark night—the significance worked in the whole body and the chemistry and the neurophysiology and the action, right? So you say that there’s a two-way flow. The soma becomes significant. The significance becomes somatic, right? It unfolds. The meaning is unfolded in matter, in the whole body. I call that signa-somatic. Significant. Signa-somatic. It’s two-way flow. And therefore, it’s all one process.
Now, we’re not making a distinction of mind and matter, but we are going to say that at each stage you have this distinction. It’s more like the distinction of north and south, which is present everywhere. It’s not that north is one thing and south is another, or the form and the content, right?
So the idea, then, is that this happens on many levels of subtlety. You see, the word “hormone,” for example, that’s a Greek word meaning “messenger,” carrying a meaning. In other words, if there is danger, the hormones or whatever will carry the message of mobilizing the body to do something about the danger. It carries the message to the various parts of the body which are relevant. See, the chemicals act as messengers. So we could say they’re part of the meaning. They’re a little bit like letters carrying messages. The letter is of no significance in itself, it’s what’s written on it that counts the meaning.
And that idea has been developed by modern biologists, by molecular biologists, when they talk about the DNA molecule. The DNA molecule is supposed to be a code—that is to say, a language: a tremendously complex molecule in all its parts. Now, you could say it has—then they say there’s RNA, which carries messages from parts of the DNA to various sites in the cell where proteins are made. The message tells those sites to make certain proteins instead of others. So it organizes the activity of the cell so that, according to the DNA, it will produce this kind of cell or that kind of cell or another kind, right? It all depends. So the information in the DNA determines the nature of the cell—according to this theory, anyway, which seems to have been verified quite a bit. And so you could say that that sort of behavior is going on not merely in us and in our body, but it seems to be fundamental to the whole of life as we know it.
Now the virus particle comes in. It’s another bit of DNA surrounded by some coating which makes it difficult to recognize. And then it gets in there and starts to act instead of the DNA of the cell. So the cell starts to make virus particles instead of maintaining the cell. And therefore, the whole thing goes wrong. So the disease consists, you could say, of misinformation in the virus. It’s part of the soma. That’s signo-somatic.
Now, there’s soma-significance at that level, because the immune system has all sorts of complex things going on in there—which I can’t even remember—which usually can recognize these virus particles and dissolve them or do something to them, precipitate them, make them inactive, right? So, see, the soma of the virus particle is significant to the immune system, and the immune system acts signo-somatically on the virus particle to do something, right? But, of course, the immune system can get confused, and instead it can attack the body cells, which you call autoimmunity, right? A very serious disease.
So it seems that sort of thing is going on much more common. It’s not just us, but it’s rather going on in the whole of life. And I might propose that it’s even going on beyond life, in inanimate matter, too. That one can give arguments in favor of that sort of thing. So that we could say that soma-significant and signo-somatic is the way by which the whole process is organized. Now, therefore, it’s not to make a division between us and the world, but we’re all taking part in a similar process.
Now, you could make an analogy to the psychological problems of the individual and the problems of society as due to misinformation. Now, you see, if a person has absorbed a number of assumptions which are of very high meaning, then he will act that way and his whole behavior is misinformed, just as a cell has been misinformed to produce virus particles, or something goes wrong with the cell, the DNA of the cell, so it produces cancer cells instead of normal cells, right?
Now, similarly, in the mind, you see, we could say there’s a kind of a misinformation—or call it disease, if you like—which is communicable. So therefore, we can see now, in society, we can communicate things that are right and are helpful, and we can also communicate misinformation. Now, this misinformation, when it gets at this level, is very serious, right? You can’t so easily correct it. That’s clear, isn’t it? So, it’s misinformation, what I call the generative process. You see, the DNA information enters the generative process of the whole cell, right? And similarly, there is a generative process of the mind, the deeper levels. Misinformation coming in there will disorganize the mind of the individual, but it will disorganize the society. And you could say it’s no use trying to deal with this unless you can get at the real cause or at the real root. We generally try to deal with it way down the line, you see, from the symptoms, which are really products of this generative process.
Now, meaning has to do with the generative process. You see, you could say, in some sense, the immune system—the cells there, whatever they are—are able to recognize a virus particle. It’s very similar to what we say when we recognize something dangerous. It means something. And an action follows. You see, a disposition follows.
Audience
It appears we’ve built a society that’s living on things that’s dangerous.
Bohm
What?
Audience
That is, we have built a society that is sustaining itself on the things that are dangerous.
Bohm
Yes. Yes, it’s misinformation. Dangerous misinformation, you see, operating in the generative process, which is not very conscious, right?
Audience
Are you saying that disposition is dangerous?
Bohm
That particular one, yeah. You see, for example, the cell may be disposed—once the virus particle enters, the cell is now disposed to produce more virus particles rather than whatever the cell needs. The cell will die. The other virus particles go out and do the same and so on. So if you get ill with the virus, the virus particles that come into you can do you no harm. There are only a few of them. But your body just simply acts as a feeding ground for virus particles and spreading the misinformation.
Audience
It’s doing what it’s supposed to do, just like the brain is doing what it’s supposed to do working with an idea.
Bohm
Right.
Audience
I mean, the cell is doing what it has to do.
Bohm
It’s doing what it has to do, but the virus particle is informing it to make virus particles, you see. Yeah, the brain is being informed to make nationalism, or whatever, you see.
Audience
In the body, there is some kind of intelligence or order, that either it operates and wipes out this virus, or it doesn’t operate and the organism dies.
Bohm
That’s true. Or else it even goes worse: it attacks the body when there are no virus particles sometimes.
Audience
So in the brain there must be that same thing, but it’s not operating.
Bohm
Not visibly, anyway.
Audience
[???] point of overcoming the virus.
Bohm
Yeah, we could say that is the principal problem—one of the principal problems—humanity has always had, which is now very serious, because of this misinformation. See, the mixture of correct and wrong information is very dangerous. The correct information about uranium and so on to produce hydrogen bombs and the misinformation about nationalism to make sure it will tend to make them, to dispose people to use them, right?
You see, so the point is that that also happens in the body. You see, the more correctly it works in some ways, the more dangerous it is when the misinformation… you see, in the case, some kinds of cancers, for example, will misinform the body to produce blood cells to feed the cancer. So the more efficient the body is at feeding the ordinary cells, the more efficiently it can feed cancer cells. And so young people, therefore, die of cancer faster than older, as a rule, just because of the greater vigor.
Audience
In nature, there’s usually a purpose for a bacteria or whatever. And the same with viruses. Can we assume that there is a purpose and a reason in nature for a virus?
Bohm
Well, there may or may not be. I don’t know if anybody knows it. You see, the virus—according to present scientific ideas, which obviously are very limited—the virus just developed, you know, as one of the possibilities of life, right? Now, many viruses probably are beneficial or useful or harmless. Many bacteria we absolutely have to have, you see. So now somewhere in the relation between them, it doesn’t work, right?
Audience
In the body, the immune system’s actions and the actions of the virus are mechanical actions [???]
Bohm
That’s an assumption which many people have made, but we’re not sure of that. You see, we have to distinguish between the assumptions that scientists are making and what may be the case. You see, that is an assumption which is common in science, now that everything works by mechanism. That may not be true. You see, it may be only correct up to a point.
Now, for example, the immune system can be affected by people’s thoughts and feelings. It’s well known that people who may have incurable diseases sometimes can be highly affected to have a recovery which would have seemed impossible, or vice versa. People who you would think are going to recover, if their state of mind is poor, they don’t.
Audience
Then thoughts and feelings also, as you say, are also based on chemical—
Bohm
Well, I don’t say they’re based that way. I’m saying that they are that way, but there may be something still more subtle, you see, that’s floating in another context and in another one. And therefore, we don’t know that the whole thing is mechanical. You see, we know that certain aspects can be isolated as mechanical.
Audience
So what is the limit of the mechanism?
Bohm
We don’t know. You see, I’m proposing that eventually it’s not a mechanism, that it’s a whole. But it may be various parts can be relatively mechanical, having relative independence, you see. But the thing as a whole may not be mechanical. But it would be a mistake, if that were the case, to assume that it is mechanical.
Audience
What would be the brain’s immunization system?
Bohm
Well, that’s what we have to explore. See, I’m saying society and the individual lack something analogous to the immune system of the body. Perhaps they have it, but it has gone wrong. See, what I would say the most evident feature of the immune system is: if you see something false, it goes. See, every one of these pieces of misinformation is something false. But we don’t see that to be false. The same problem arises with the body’s immune system. If the cell or the virus can be recognized by the immune system, it can be dealt with. But the trouble is that many of these viruses are very clever and they undergo mutations that make them unrecognizable. You see, you have learned to recognize certain viruses—right, influenza. They make a slight change, and you no longer recognize them. So now they seem like harmless proteins, you see. Therefore, you sort of let them go.
Audience
Is there not also a difficulty in the sense that, what you are suggesting is that there’s a very basic disposition, that kind of cultural conditioning that goes back so far and is of such a vast extent that that in itself will affect and distort even that system of cognition and perceptions that presumably is able to immunize those harmful [???]
Bohm
I’m proposing that it has in fact done so, but that’s not necessarily the end of the case, because every meaning is immersed, we were saying, in a still greater context, which is more subtle. And therefore, if that can be brought into action or awakened, maybe something new can happen.
You see, if we stick to this range of meanings that we are used to, I’m saying, in fact, it has happened, just what you said. But maybe there’s more, you see. You see, if we assume there is no more, then that will be a self-fulfilling assumption.
Audience
Yes, of course. Then it would be [???]
Bohm
So for the sake, at least, of proper scientific attitude, we say we shouldn’t assume that. We should propose various possibilities and explore them. You see, that’s the only sensible thing to do.
Audience
How does entropy relate to meaning?
Bohm
Well, people have tried to find relations to it. You see, that’s a more technical question. You see, some people have equated entropy with the negative of information. But I think it’s a rather technical question and has not really been settled in science anyway. So I’m not sure it would help us to discuss it.
Audience
It’s almost as if meaning is like music, the idea of a stream that’s constantly changing, that isn’t fixed at any one moment. It’s constantly changing according to society, all the input in society and the changes that are going on.
Bohm
And also what people see in nature and everything that happens, right?
Audience
Right. And as long as you’re working in, as long as you are in there and part of that, you’re going to be buffeted around by all this misinformation or correct information. And is there sort of an implication here that there might be a possibility of not being in that stream?
Bohm
Yeah, I’m suggesting—certainly, we have been generally in that stream. But if we assume that that’s all there is, then that will be a self-fulfilling assumption.
Audience
Yes.
Bohm
Therefore, for the sake of—in science, in any reasonable approach, we shouldn’t make such assumptions. If it’s unknown, then we don’t assume something that will close the issue, but rather propose that it may be otherwise.
Audience
Maybe another possibility. But the way it is right now, we’re unaware that there is something that might be out.
Bohm
Yeah, but we’re not aware that there isn’t something either, you see. You see, as we don’t know, so therefore the right attitude in the face of the unknown is to be open, you see. Now, that’s a disposition again. You see, you can be disposed to be open to the unknown or you can be disposed to close off, right? According—if you say that what we know is all there is, you’re disposed right away to close off, right? If you say: well, what we know may not be all there is, then you can be open.
Audience
It would almost seem like, as soon as there is a fixed meaning, at some level it will be a real [???].
Bohm
If it’s absolutely fixed, right? Perhaps I could say a few words about necessity now. If something is absolutely fixed, it’s necessary. If something is always so, then it’s necessarily so. You see, “necessary” means it cannot be otherwise, right? Now, absolutely necessary means that there’s no way out. If it’s relatively necessary, it’s going to be that way, but maybe perhaps it could be otherwise. But at least relatively it can’t.
Now, the word “necessary” also has a root in Latin, which is necessi, which means “don’t yield.” So the disposition and the concept of necessity is don’t yield, right? Be rigid. Hold, right? That’s necessary. That’s useful sometimes; saying: hold, right? But if you say hold absolutely no matter what happens, then it is trouble. So, see, absolute necessity would mean it has the danger of absolute rigidity of the attitude or the disposition.
Audience
Can we fix meanings because we have found them or find them to be protective at some point or originally?
Bohm
Yes, well—
Audience
Can they continue beyond their usefulness because we think somehow that they’re going to continue maintaining a protective function in our lives?
Bohm
Yes, well, we may think that certain things are necessary for our security—perhaps correctly—and then we begin to think that they’re absolutely necessary. As to how we slip over into that, we’d have to go into saying that it cannot be otherwise, no matter what happens, right? And therefore, your mind won’t yield on that point, right? You see, then it becomes misinformation, you see: what was correct information in the earlier context becomes misinformation in the new context.
Audience
It seems all these things going on that are not in general awareness, that what has to happen is somehow there has to be an awareness of this. Is that the issue?
Bohm
Yes, let’s try to put it…. We’ve discussed this process of meaning, right? Signo-somatic, soma-significant, physical, mental. And this process is not aware of itself, you see. It’s only aware of a certain content, right? You see, if I consider this chair, I have meaning about the chair as a process going on in me, which is fairly distinct from the chair itself, right? It may be correct, it may be incorrect, or both. Then, suppose you form the meaning about—you see, we formed the word “meaning” (meaning of this process, the meaning of that, the meaning of that), and now we form the word “meaning,” right? Just as every word has a meaning, so the word “meaning” must have a meaning, right? But what does the word “meaning” mean?
Now, if we say the meaning of the chair is some actuality to which this meaning refers, that we can come in contact with. So the meaning of “meaning” would have to be ultimately some actuality that the word “meaning” would mean.
Audience
Isn’t that tautology?
Bohm
What?
Audience
Isn’t that tautology?
Bohm
Not necessarily, because we’re using it at different levels, you see? The meaning is a process. We ordinarily don’t consider that meaning is an actual process.
Audience
We look at it as a fact or the fixed situation.
Bohm
Well, also as something mental and, say, ethereal, and not really actual. We say meaning is not considered to be an actuality or a fact, right?
Audience
But we look at it as fixed rather than as a process.
Bohm
That’s one thing, but we don’t even consider it to be an actual fact.
Audience
But we act on our meanings all the time as if they were real.
Bohm
Yes, but—
Audience
Great wars and [???] of our meanings.
Bohm
Yeah, well, we consider our meanings to refer to something else that is real, but that they themselves are not real.
Audience
Meanings are a symbol for reality.
Bohm
Yeah, they are a symbol, but we say that’s all they are.
Audience
Right. But you’re saying that there actually is all this [???]. They create us.
Bohm
Yes, they are really very active as a process. They are an actual fact.
Audience
Is it not the fact that it’s so difficult to see the action of meaning, that it is so pervasive and so subtle? Because you described it the way you described it before that meaning operates in a very large scale, and it touches everything. So it’s very comprehensive, very pervasive. But because it it acts in such a fine and subtle way, it seems to be extremely difficult to see and discover.
Bohm
Yes, you see, that’s the point. That apparently we’re facing this fact that we have found it difficult to say what we mean by meaning. You see, what do I mean by the chair? Ultimately, I can point to it and say: this is what I mean by the chair, right?
Audience
It’s almost as if what we say is real is actually—what we call real is our meaning.
Bohm
Yes, but not only that, but it is actually real and created by us, by our meaning.
Audience
The reality we know is our need.
Bohm
Yes, but also a lot of it—yes, we want to say that we must be immersed in a greater reality, which is not just our own meaning, but at least a great deal of our individual and social reality is produced by what it means to us.
Audience
If there is a greater reality, we know nothing of it.
Bohm
Well, we may know very little of it. You see, it’s not clear whether we know nothing. You see, that might be an assumption.
Audience
That’s what I meant, is—referring to what he said—that I experience my meaning as reality.
Bohm
Yes, that’s right. Well, reality is a meaning. You see, the distinction between reality and unreality is a meaning, and we have to go into that creation of illusion.
Audience
If I put it this way, do you agree now: “I see” and “I mean it” both are the same. And seeing is action. And this way, being and meaning are the same.
Bohm
Ultimately. But there’s a relative distinction at the ordinary level, saying the being of the chair is different from what the chair means to me, right? Because I don’t know all about the chair. I have an abstraction of it. But when it comes to the mind, to the human being, then being is clearly not separable from meaning even in that sense.
Audience
The event of being is the event of meaning.
Bohm
Yes, especially for the human life.
Audience
Dave, one problem I have is that I go back to your metaphor of the cell and virus. When the virus attacks the cell, the moment it actually enters the cell and begins turning off the genes and turning on the genes, the cell is no longer signo-somaticizing. It is dead, and it has become a virus. So it has radically changed and—
Bohm
Well, I don’t think it’s right away dead. You see, the cell is active enough to produce more virus. So, in some sense, it’s still alive.
Audience
It’s a virus.
Bohm
Yes, but it’s alive. It’s alive as—
Audience
It has been turned off that originally was that cell, and it’s now just the DNA of a virus.
Bohm
Yes, but that virus is alive, too, in some sense. You see, the life has been transformed from the life of a cell to the life of a virus.
Audience
But my point is that, in that case, using that as a metaphor—and I know all metaphors are kind of limited, right? But it seems like in the case of a human, we have this experience. It may be undifferentiated in general. But out of that we give meaning to many of these various actions that take place. And I don’t think we’re transformed, but we’re changed in the same sense that that cell was changed by that virus.
Bohm
Well, we may be, you see, that we are changed more than we think. You see, for example, the information, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” worked a profound change in people and made them capable of doing things they would not have been able to do without that misinformation. See, eventually it produced people who could run concentration camps, though as children you couldn’t imagine they were anything like that.
Audience
So when you’re saying meaning is real, that is meaning as a process and not meaning as something fixed.
Bohm
That’s right. Meaning as an actual process. Meaning not only as a process—that’s correct—I want to emphasize that it is an actuality.
Audience
But the actuality is a process. Not something fixed.
Bohm
Yeah, that’s right. It is an actual process, just like the water running in the stream.
Audience
It’s different from the experience to which it’s assigned.
Bohm
Now, you see, we’ll discuss that maybe next time, the relation between symbol and meaning, right? You see, because there’s a certain difference which is useful but limited, right? We have to go into that.
So maybe we should have one more question, because it’s about time to have our break. Who should I—who’s the most insistent? Or do people all yield to each other?
Audience
Is somebody else speaking?
Bohm
Okay, go ahead.
Audience
I’m a little hard of hearing, so “chair” takes on a new meaning for me. In other words, so doesn’t mean take all—meaning really has a lot to do with the function of that particular object. In other words, that’s what we call a functional type of thing for the individual that wants a certain chair for a certain thing. An office chair or that. So meaning “a chair” broadens out to a functional situation where I would like a chair where I could hear, see? So my attitude about a chair becomes my need. My need also becomes the need for the chair. In other words, it interchanges. So how the meaning we put on it has how we use it as function.
Bohm
Well, that’s part of the meaning, is function. But, you see, part of the meaning goes beyond function. For example, the value which makes something worth doing at all, right? You see, you cannot reduce the whole of life to function, because then it would have no value. All function is ultimately in the light of some value beyond function.
Audience
I per chance viewed a television story, which was a true story. And this involves meaning, perception, assumption, and conditioning. The story of a baby that was born in a mental institution. The mother rejected it. It was a private institution. The child grew up normal—I mean, was normal in an institution—became mentally retarded with physical conditioning where it was like had a stroke, couldn’t speak, and was taken into a psychiatric conditioning situation, and was brought out of this. There was a most amazing story where the child was almost like an animal, began to function, couldn’t even speak, and came back to near normalcy. And I thought this was an excellent example of these conditions that you’re speaking of.
Bohm
Yes, I mean, that’s certainly true. Even with animals deprived of contact with some mother or mother-substitute, they don’t develop at all. And it’s that meaning which allows for physical development.
I think we should call a halt now for half an hour, approximately, as that.
Audience
But I thought we were going to go from ten to twelve?
Bohm
No, I thought—maybe I was wrong. Did you plan refreshments in the middle, or…? No. Well, then I got it mistaken. All right, then let’s go ahead.
Audience
We can just take five or ten minutes.
Bohm
I think it’s better to have a little break myself. Let’s say by 11:15, or approximately, right?