Bohm
During this weekend, I thought we would go into question. It states on the leaflet that we would discuss order and creativity, but I’m not sure that we will begin with the question of order. We have been thinking it over. We will begin by discussing the question of meaning. We want to bring in creativity. And order will come in also.
Does everybody hear me? No. Is that—all right, am I audible now? Right?
Audience
Yes.
Bohm
Also, I thought we would try to have a dialogue, if we can, to be able to discuss freely among us. Perhaps in the beginning the questions will be directed toward me, but I hope that it will become a talk—people will be talking with each other more and more as the weekend proceeds. So it’s very important that we should have a good contact, you see, that we feel free to talk to each other. And feel free to interrupt me, for example, at any time if it’s not clear or if you want to discuss the point.
Now, the first question is: why discuss meaning? I don’t know if it seems strange to you to be discussing this. Perhaps everybody feels he knows what meaning is. But if you think about it a while, you’ll see it’s not so simple. The question of meaning is very important, you see. We usually take it for granted. But everything depends on meaning. Not only communication—all thought, everything we do, the whole of society, our whole being. This is the point I’m going to try to bring out, you see.
You could ask what is meant by the word “meaning.” That is a sort of a more subtle question because we have brought in the word “meaning” twice, right? See, that’s a tricky question. If you ask, “What is the meaning of meaning?” See, usually we take meaning for granted. So, say everybody knows what meaning is, but if I bring up the word “meaning,” every word has got to have a meaning, so the word “meaning” has got to have a meaning, too. So what is the meaning of the word “meaning”?
This raises something more subtle than you would think at first sight. Because, first of all, we talk about the meaning of this, the meaning of the word—no, of buildings, of people, of relationships, of money, of physics, or of anything. There are thousands of examples of meaning, or an infinite number of examples. But when we just take the word “meaning” by itself, we are discussing something much more profound and deeper, as the word “meaning” has a meaning which is the whole process of what is meant by meaning. So that includes significance, and it also includes value. If you say something means something, it means a lot to me, it means it has high value.
Now, you see, value is a very important thing because, according to what is valuable to you, you will act. The values determine one’s action. It also includes intention. You say, “I mean to do it” is the same as “I intend to do it,” “It’s my purpose to do it.” So meaning is also purpose. So the whole of life is involved in this. If you say purpose, intention, value, significance, the whole of life is penetrated by this, right?
Now, I want to say, the point I’m going to make is, well, first of all, I’ll say that usually, when we usually use the word “meaning,” we make a separation between meaning and what is, and being. We say there is something, and besides that I mean something, right? There is a chair and I mean, my meaning is, the word “chair” signifies chair, the object chair, right? So we take a distinction between significance—or meaning, or purpose, intention, value—and being, right? Is that clear? That’s common usage of the word, and it has a certain value.
That is, it’s quite right to say whatever I mean by the chair is not exactly the same as the chair. First of all, what I mean is something that’s going on in me, usually we think, and the chair is something else. The meaning may be similar to what the chair is. It may reflect the chair, but there’s a clear distinction between them.
Yes?
Audience
Do you see the meaning and value are not always associated or do you see them as associated?
Bohm
I see the value as a kind of meaning.
Audience
A kind of meaning.
Bohm
Yeah. And significance also, and value, significance and purpose or intention. They’re all kinds of meaning, right? Is that—
Audience
The word “interpretation” has to come in there.
Bohm
Interpretation has a meaning also.
Audience
Right.
Bohm
It’s another. Good. That’s a further explanation of the word meaning, right?
Audience
What did you mean?
Bohm
Yeah. Explain—importance is another kind of meaning, right? If something means a lot to me, it’s important to me, right? Interpretation means to transfer the meaning between one, say one language and another, or one person and another. To say, what do you mean?
Audience
Interpretation. If we don’t give the same interpretation of what’s being said, we’re not getting the meaning.
Bohm
Well, we have a different meaning. You see, we—
Audience
That is the meaning.
Bohm
What?
Audience
If we give the same interpretation.
Bohm
Well, but we may both be wrong, you see.
Audience
Then there’s no meaning.
Bohm
Yeah. But, you see, the first problem is: can we have the same meaning? And the second one is: will it be right? Will the meaning correspond to the real thing? If we mean—suppose we say… I don’t know, what is the meaning of anything?
Audience
You can start simple and say: pass the salt.
Bohm
What?
Audience
You can start simply and say, pass the salt, and if I don’t give the same meaning to the words, then you don’t get salt.
Bohm
That’s right. Well, that’s very simple, yes. But now we could get more complicated, right? Or we could say: what is the meaning of freedom, of justice?
Audience
That’s the whole other end of the spectrum.
Bohm
Yeah. Or in between we have all sorts of things. Now, if we can’t give the same meaning, or essentially the same meaning, then we are going to have a failure of communication. But that’s one of the problems of society, that people don’t give the same meaning. It’s very common.
Audience
Even if they use the same words?
Bohm
Yes. I mean—well, the word “justice” could mean almost anything to different people, right? You see, it means that I get my justice to me, or to you it may mean justice to you, right? The word “freedom,” for example: people argue about it, fight over it.
Audience
I wondered, when you opened the discussion, I thought that you were going to talk about—in referring to meaning—you were going to talk about meaning of life.
Bohm
I would like to talk about that, yes.
Audience
I see.
Bohm
I was trying to—we were starting very simply first.
Audience
Meaning it would have something to do with relationship also—your relationship to whatever you were discussing.
Bohm
Yes. Yes, that’s clear, because according to what something means to you, that’s how you’re related to it. Right? You see, if something has a great deal of meaning to you, you know you’re strongly related. If it has no meaning to you, then you’re indifferent to it. Or you can say being related to that person means a lot, or that relationship means that I’m secure, right? Or that I’m not secure.
Audience
Well, even if they see the same thing, just like I just talked to two people that came back from Hong Kong just tonight, one of them loved it and one of them didn’t, and they told me all the meanings it meant to them that they didn’t like, and the other told me all the meanings that they did like. It was the same object.
Bohm
That’s right. They see the same object, but it means something different. Therefore, communication fails, right? So if—
Audience
Could you say, if I understand you, that we are agreeing on the same meaning?
Bohm
We have got to have some sort of agreement on meaning to have a common understanding.
Audience
So there are two parts to a meaning. One is the personal part and one is the non-personal part. For example, if I spoke Greek and nobody else understood Greek, it wouldn’t have any meaning to one who didn’t understand at all. It would be gibberish.
Bohm
No.
Audience
But at the same time, you take a word like “freedom,” although two people may differ on it, who understand, who know the word, who speak English, they may differ on what it means to them, the value of the word to them, but they would understand what it—they would have some basis for understanding. So there are two parts to it: one is the personal and one is the non-personal.
Bohm
Yes, well, meaning is probably primarily social in the sense that if we are cultural, you see—it’s very unlikely; there would be some very limited range of meanings that arise if we were isolated individuals. You see, without some common social relationship and culture and communication, meaning would not develop very much. So if you have different languages, then the only meaning is that they’re sounds.
Audience
That’s right.
Bohm
But once we get to know the language, then it means a lot more. Now, the word “freedom” has a vaguely similar meaning to everybody, some similarity, but there are very important differences—not only different individuals, but in different cultures. For example, you can see throughout the world that there are several cultures where freedom has totally different meanings, and there’s a tremendous fight that goes on about it.
Audience
Is there an underlying reality of freedom that we’re trying to discover?
Bohm
Well, that’s what we want to explore, you see. I’m trying to say this whole discussion, the whole spirit of our discussion this weekend, is: we are not going to start from a conclusion, but try to explore the thing. And I don’t think we’re quite ready to say if there is an underlying reality to freedom. That may come out. You see, somebody might assume that there’s an underlying reality to freedom, but on what basis can you assume it?
Audience
Is there meaning—the problem, I think, with looking at the word “meaning” is that the simplicity of the word—really what something is, the fact of what it is, which is ever-changing—that reality is not conditioned. But when one is looking at a word “freedom,” which is conditioned by culture—conditioned by somebody who is brought up in the Soviet Union, somebody who’s brought up in the United States, somebody who’s brought up in Europe and by an educational conditioning process—the word “freedom” takes on a different meaning, which is coming from the past. But when the meaning is seen as what it is, simply what it is there in the moment, then there’s no condition to the meaning.
Bohm
Well, we would like to be in a situation where we’re free of conditioning to meaning. But, see, usually when people talk, every word is loaded in some way, or most words are likely to have a loaded meaning, as they used to say—having some emotional charge, and some words very little and some words more. Now, so when people are talking, the fact that the meaning is conditioned comes in, you see.
Now, I think we haven’t gone very far into why meaning should be conditioned or how they get conditioned, you know, what it means that they are conditioned. You see, we have sort of raised the question at this moment of the conditioning of meaning, implying that there are two kinds of meaning: one is unconditioned and the other is conditioned. So there would be a direct perception of a new meaning, for example, which we would say would be unconditioned. But most meanings that we generally use are taken for granted as we communicate, and we sort of are bathed, we live, in this conditioned meaning, right? Especially as we engage in all the activities of society, where you pretty well have to do that to be able to get along, right?
Audience
You talk about conditioned meaning and unconditioned meaning. I guess all the conditioned meanings are given meanings. Am I right to say so?
Bohm
Well, you see, I think we’re going a bit too fast. The question is: what is the nature of this conditioning of meaning? I wanted to get into that. You see, why should meanings be restricted and conditioned? You see, one of the conditionings is that I have my meaning, you have yours, and so on, right? Or one culture has one meaning, another culture has another meaning. You see, a lot of the conditioning we don’t know about because it’s cultural conditioning.
Now, if everybody in the culture practically has the same conditioning, it’s extremely hard for anybody to know he’s got it. If everybody speaks English with the same accent, then we all think we have no accent. So therefore, one of the points that’s going to come up is that this cultural conditioning—which is not really very conscious—is one of the major forms of conditioning. Right?
Now, besides that, you have your own particular individual condition, but most of that is cultural, too. You see, everybody—there’s the general culture, then everybody is living in his own subculture, which is a bit different. These various subcultures don’t communicate entirely. They’re somewhat isolated. And people in one subculture may find one meaning—you see, in the same country, there may be many subcultures. There are, right? You can easily say, even in this town of Ojai, probably find a number of them, where the same concept means something very different to different people.
Now, when you are talking with somebody, you see, you are talking from your subculture or culture and the other person from another one, and therefore there is disagreement. Or else you are in your own subculture and you are stuck with certain assumptions. You see, all these meanings are based on certain assumptions, right?
Audience
But you brought up the word,—I think someone earlier brought up the word—“direct perception.” Now presumably, in a direct perception where there’s nothing between the perception and that which is being perceived, this conditioning would not exist.
Bohm
Yes.
Audience
And the question is: how does one know that there is a direct perception?
Bohm
Yes, that’s one of the dangers, you see, because you may be assuming there’s direct perception, but then this may be deceptive. You see, that’s one of the things we want to be going into. You see, I think more or less we’re sort of indicating the direction in which the discussion might take in the next two days. It’s easy enough to assume that there is direct perception, but you don’t know. You see, very often you can see other people who claim to have direct perception and you suspect they don’t. They may think the same about you, right?
So… yeah?
Audience
I think the problem is that where thought is involved in any way whatsoever, there can’t be any direct perception. Because thought, because it’s coming from the past, can’t be a direct perception of something direct. There’s no barrier. So where there’s knowledge coming in, it’s coming from the past. That’s a barrier to the direct perception of what is.
Bohm
Yes. You see, but now the question is what to do about that. You see, if we take all the people in a certain subculture who are conditioned with certain meanings—like people speaking the same accent—they don’t know that they are conditioned, you see. Will this direct perception tell you that you are conditioned by your subculture? I’m not saying it will or it won’t, but that’s the question.
Audience
Well, it’s a great, great assumption in the space probe where they sent out the symbols indicating man and so forth and so on. Wasn’t this the supreme expression of hope that alien beings would be able to understand what was being sent?
Bohm
Yes. Well, yes. I mean, I don’t know that that was a hope. I mean, I don’t know. That was this program where they put the figure of a man and a woman on some piece of metal, and various symbols of different kinds. But they might not be recognized at all by totally different beings. For example, the dolphins would probably depend mainly on sound anyway, and these visual forms wouldn’t mean so much. So that’s an extreme case of imagining a culture of totally different beings.
Audience
There was an assumption with that plaque that anybody, any intelligent form of the light in the universe, would recognize, for instance, switching on and off processes, or counting and things like that. They would be able to measure and they would recognize hydrogen and things like that, so that they were trying to get out of some very basic things in the universe. And that would be the basis of meaning, if somebody else were to see that plaque.
Bohm
Yeah, then that’s an assumption. You see, the point is that underlying the conditioning of meaning is certain assumptions about what these meanings are, right? Now, most of these assumptions are tacit. They’re not explicitly stated, ever. And, in fact, you never know you make them because you sort of absorb them from your subculture. You see, that particular assumption is absorbed from a certain subculture of scientists working in a certain way. All of these people probably feel that it’s quite natural and inevitable to make that assumption. They don’t even think it’s an assumption, perhaps. And nevertheless, see, so they don’t—as long as they stay in that subculture, there’s very little to tell them that they’re making an assumption, which may or may not be true.
Audience
A few minutes ago you said unconditioned meaning. You may say that we are going to pass. But still I’m curious to ask: it sounds like self-contradictory, a contradictory statement; “unconditioned meaning.”
Bohm
Well, perhaps it is. You see, we’re exploring it. Now, we might change the word to say: let’s try to distinguish two extreme kinds of meaning. One is well known. Everybody knows about it. It’s from the past and it’s fairly simple, right? Now, another is you see a new situation, and you say, “What does it mean?” Something new. And you have to see it, perceive it. You don’t see it with the eyes only, because it you have to see it with the mind. Now, therefore there is some new—I would rather discuss the possibility of perceiving a new meaning as distinguished from going on with some variation of the old meanings.
Audience
It may be a reconditioning. Just a reconditioning.
Bohm
It may be, but it may not. You see, let me give you an example. I’ll take it from physics, because I’ve thought about that more. It should be easy enough to understand, I hope, to those who are not physicists. Newton, you know, one of his most important discoveries was the law of universal gravitation: that every object in the universe attracts every other with a gravitational force, right? Now, if you go back into the history of this—you go back, say, 2,000 years or so to the ancient Greeks—and they said there was a basic difference between earthly matter and heavenly matter. Earthly matter was highly imperfect, and it moved up steadily toward the heavens toward perfection. And therefore they thought heavenly matter was totally different from earthly matter. Now then, gradually, after the Middle Ages, evidence accumulated that this is not so, you see. For example, you find the moon has irregularities on it which are highly imperfect and look like mountains, rather like the Earth. I mean, you find all sorts of things going on, which are very similar between the Earth and the heavens, right? The moon, essentially, it’s implied as a large piece of rock, right?
Now, as a question arose, you see. If you ask somebody, “Why doesn’t the moon fall?” See, in ancient times, it was not a difficult question, because the moon is very different from objects near the Earth which fall. Their property is to fall, and heavenly matter is quite different, right? So there was no problem. But now, with new evidence accumulating, saying the moon is a big hunk of rock, see, nobody asks the question, “Why isn’t it falling?” Right? Because they took it for granted that the moon is celestial matter, which is quite different from earthly matter, and stays up in the sky where it belonged. For ages, people have been thinking that way. And that’s conditioning, right? You don’t know you have conditioning, you just do it. That’s the whole point of conditioning, is: you don’t know it. You don’t know anything about it. If you knew about it, you probably wouldn’t do it, right?
But Newton, you see, the legend is, that he was reputed to have been watching the apple fall from the apple tree. And he probably asked himself: here’s the apple falling, why isn’t the moon falling? So his answer was: it is falling. And he said everything is falling toward everything. That is universal gravitation. And he could then explain why it didn’t reach the ground by following its orbit, saying it was falling, but moving outward on the circular orbit at the same time. He had worked it all out. So there was an insight there, a moment of insight, a moment of seeing a new meaning.
You see, previous—yeah?
Audience
I’m sorry. But that new meaning is based on first seeing the idea that all things fall. So searching for a new meaning was based on another new meaning.
Bohm
Yeah, well, he saw a new meaning that all things fall. You see, the previous meaning was some things mean earthly matter, which falls, and other things mean heavenly matter, which don’t fall, right? So he suddenly saw a new meaning, which is: all things are the same matter. If earthly matter falls, heavenly matter falls.
Audience
Would you say that the first meaning was based on a theoretical assumption, and the second meaning was based on observation?
Bohm
Well, look, it’s a little more subtle than that. You see, there’s an assumption which gradually was really taken—it was never made consciously—it was taken for granted that earthly matter is different from heavenly matter. The real act of perception was the discovery that you have this assumption. You see? You see, nobody knew that he was assuming it. That’s the real problem. If you knew you were assuming it, you could stop assuming it.
Audience
But by watching the apple fall—
Bohm
No, that didn’t tell him anything. Millions of people have watched apples falling, you see, and nothing happens.
Audience
But didn’t that set into motion something else in terms of…?
Bohm
Well, no. The apple falling was just an incident that was useful. But, see, the point is: his mind was prepared by knowing that heavenly matter—he had a lot of evidence in the back of his mind, as all the scientists of the time had, that heavenly matter is not really different from earthly matter. But there was a conditioned mind which went on with the same old program that said heavenly matter—that was in one compartment of the mind. But the other compartment was: heavenly matter is quite different from earthly matter, and people automatically thought that way without noticing they’re doing it.
Audience
And they thought that was based on observation.
Bohm
They didn’t even think. See, they just took it for granted. You must see: the power of conditioning is that you don’t know that it’s there at all. It just works like a computer program working quite automatically.
Audience
You just run on a bunch of assumptions.
Bohm
But the assumption—you don’t know you’ve got them.
Audience
Right, but that’s what’s happening.
Bohm
That’s what’s happening, but you think it’s the truth.
Audience
You probably don’t even think about it.
Bohm
If you did think about it, you would say: of course, it’s quite evident. It’s okay.
Audience
And this assumption is created through the evolution of meanings.
Bohm
Yes. You take meanings for granted, right?
Audience
Meaning starts and creates, and that meaning is taken as an assumption, and then that creates a basis on which to make more meanings.
Bohm
Yeah. And everybody agrees, you see. See, one of the ways of testing for whether you’re on the right line is consensus; everybody agreeing, right? Here you have everybody agreeing. It’s nice.
Audience
[???] agree with you at the time.
Bohm
Well, most tacitly, they never even raised the question. But tacitly, implicitly, everybody was—what?
Audience
When he explained it to other people, did they—
Bohm
Well, those who were immediately, they could see right away. The best scientists could see right away that he was right. You see, other people took a little longer, you see. But the real thing was how to break through that conditioning. You see, once—just one second—once he saw it, then it was much easier for somebody else to see it, provided his mind wasn’t too rigid.
Audience
I think one of the most powerful ones that mankind had, really, was: the Earth was flat. That seemed to be sensible, even. So it’s only by physically actually discovering it wasn’t could it ever be changed.
Bohm
Well, it was changed by insight again. You see, some of the ancient Greeks saw evidence that the Earth was round. They even postulated it was a sphere, and estimated its size, and weren’t too far off. You see, there was quite a bit of indirect evidence which suggested it wasn’t flat. And, in fact, this evidence was around for a long time. Now, the thing which convinced people finally was going around it. But just simply not taking for granted the evidence of the immediate experience was the first step. You see, to be able to question common sense and immediate experience was the crucial step. Now, that is exceptionally difficult.
Audience
What is critical?
Bohm
Yeah, to be able to question what everybody takes for granted. You see, the act of perception has its root in that.
Audience
So Newton had a direct perception of the new meaning.
Bohm
Yeah.
Audience
And it was only later on through consensus that it became a social meaning.
Bohm
Yes.
Audience
At one point in time it was a direct perception of one individual.
Bohm
Yeah.
Audience
Now, what is it that makes for a direct perception in other individuals of this new meaning?
Bohm
Well, I think he explained—I mean, I’m not sure I get your question, but the way it seems to me is Newton could explain what he had done to other people, and they would see the point too, right?
Audience
Right, but why isn’t it just subjective? I mean, how was he able to explain it that they directly perceived it for themselves and didn’t attribute it as a personal interpretation?
Bohm
Well, no, that may happen later still. You see, I think that, in the beginning, he explained it and somebody says, “Yes, I see, you’re right.” Later on, it was taught to students and said: there it is, the formula, and so on. It’s all in the book and you accept.
Audience
So the formula is the vehicle for communicating the direct perception.
Bohm
No, because these people didn’t—once you learn it from the formula, it could be, but in general, if you don’t, if you stick to the formula alone, then it becomes merely accepting an assumption without understanding what it’s about, right?
Audience
[???]
Bohm
Yeah.
Audience
Up until just this century, did anybody question how the sun gave off so much heat? It was just assumed that the [???]
Bohm
Well, people did question it, you see, and some people saw there was a problem, you see; that they said, you know, if it were coal burning, it wouldn’t last very long. And, you know, they raised questions of that nature, and they thought maybe the gravitational force gave off energy as the sun collapsed. But they thought that might last for a few million years. But, you see, people were raising those questions from time to time, right?
Audience
Was part of Newton’s communication the fact that he had broken through the condition? That he had started to question, and that the people that he was trying to—the initial group that understood him, did they also break through the conditioning?
Bohm
Well, it was much easier. You see, Newton had to break through—see, you have to look at the nature of the conditioning, which is: it’s not some mysterious thing, you see. It’s something which is very immediate. It’s just just what everybody’s taking for granted without knowing they’re doing it. So the kind of sharpness or penetration or intensity of mind which becomes aware of that is what ends the that conditioning, right? Now, once he’s done it, then on this particular point, he can then communicate to another scientist. But he doesn’t necessarily communicate that intensity which will enable them to do the same thing on some new problem.
Audience
I think he said that he observed something until it revealed itself.
Bohm
Yes, but then—
Audience
[???]
Bohm
That’s right. But then, I think I would put it that he observed something until it ceased to conceal itself.
Audience
[???]
Bohm
Well, it’s different in the sense that you want to say reveal, it means emphasize, it’s coming out. But I think the key problem is concealment at this stage: that the mind, by taking something for granted, is concealing the fact. And therefore, the major—if you could say, revealing consists of removing the veil of concealment, that’s one image I could give you.
Audience
Now, the scientists who learned from Newton that everything was falling, now that was a new kind of conditioning.
Bohm
Well, in the beginning, if they really understood it, it wasn’t. But as people began to repeat, then it’s conditioning.
Audience
But once they knew it, wouldn’t that be a conditioning which was more in accord with the facts, but still conditioning?
Bohm
That’s true, yes. You see, that’s the point: that gradually, Newton’s law became another form of conditioning instead of the ancient Greek law. And then Einstein came along and said Newton’s law is not entirely true, as he had some insight of a similar nature, and so on.
Now, therefore, you can see that a great deal of the whole progress of science depends on that conditioning. See, some of it is necessary, obviously, to be able to work. For example, it’s the same as the conditioning to drive on the right-hand side of the road: you don’t question it, because you see the point. But the dangerous kind of conditioning is the kind that you just take for granted and don’t know you have.
Some conditioning is obviously necessary. If you’re conditioned to be able to speak this language, you can’t speak another one. If you go to another country, you’ve got to learn the other language, and that’s another kind of conditioning. But within that language there may be assumptions that you don’t know are there, which would affect your behavior, right? Do you see what I mean? So conditioning has its place, but it has its danger.
Audience
Can we say we’re sometimes going to have to get to the place where we go from the difference between physical meaning and physical conditioning to psychological? I mean, the physical is back into—you were saying driving on the right-hand of the road is a physical thing that we do. But then that doesn’t cause us a lot of problems.
Bohm
It may. It may. Because suppose you go to another country where they drive on the left-hand side, you may find yourself on the wrong side of the road.
Audience
But we can break that conditioning almost immediately and go to the left-hand road.
Bohm
Yeah, you can. But before you do it, you may get killed.
Audience
But if you thought it was real and absolute, like we do psychologically, then you probably would get killed.
Bohm
Yeah. Well, you see, but you don’t have any strong psychological preference for right or left. But still, you have a psychological preference for whatever you’re used to. And therefore it’s more comfortable to stick with what you’re used to. And therefore, if you went to England, you would have to watch out for that. Because if nobody was on the road, you might find it more comfortable to drift over to the right-hand side. And therefore, it’s not easy to separate the physical and the psychological.
Audience
So if Newton had a direct perception, and Einstein had a direct perception, and the one direct perception, in a sense, contradicted the other, what is the nature of direct perception?
Bohm
Well, no, you see, that’s only if you assume that what Newton said was absolutely true; that there was a contradiction. You see, if you suppose—you see, Newton proposed some laws which were assumed then to be completely and absolutely correct. Einstein said Newton’s laws are fairly good in a certain domain, but when looked at in a domain of high speeds compared with that of light, they’re not. So, therefore, what Einstein saw was a limitation on Newton’s law. What was contradicted was the assumption that Newton’s law has an unlimited validity.
Audience
Yeah. But what I’m asking is: what is the nature of direct perception, then? I mean, if they were both direct perceptions.
Bohm
Each one perceived the conditioning. I say the most direct perception was the perception of the conditioning that was taken for granted, you see.
Audience
Was that communicated, that that was the most direct?
Bohm
No, that wasn’t. You see, that’s the point. But people then focus on the next step and say that was the most perceptive step. You see, seeing the conditioning, in my view, is the first most direct perception. And then it was fairly simple, once Newton saw that, to say: why isn’t the moon falling if it’s a hunk of rock?
Audience
I wonder if it would help to bring this out, to bring in the concept of concepts, and whether celestial matter was a concept that he saw through.
Bohm
Yeah, I think that’s right. But I think it might be better to do that when we have more time to discuss, because that could take us a long story. As I say, I regard this as a sort of a general sketch or introduction to get into it.
So we’re in this question of the conditioning of meaning. And part of it is just taking something for granted. That’s a very important kind of conditioning which you don’t know you have. And, in fact, you could say that in some way all conditioning has that nature. There’s some assumption which you’re taking for granted which is behind it.
You see, suppose you assume that a road is a good road, a level road, or that this floor will support you, you see. Therefore, you walk in a certain way. Your body is disposed in a certain way. Of course, there might be a hole in there under the carpet, and then, if you once found that out, then you would have a different disposition in walking. You see, according to the assumption, the whole system is disposed—the body, right? The emotions are disposed according to your assumption as well, right? And so on.
So, now that disposition acts without consciousness, without thought. The assumption may be put consciously by thinking it, but once you have made it, the disposition requires no further conscious thought. So therefore, assumptions—we have to say there’s a connection between assumptions and actions, which is through the disposition. And when the disposition becomes fixed (because the assumption is fixed) then you are conditioned to act without knowing what you’re doing.
You see, if you can review that, see, when you make a mistake, if when you make a mistake or something happens, you can then become aware of that assumption, then that’s not a serious problem. But if you’re taking this assumption for granted so much that you can’t be aware of it, then you have a serious problem. Because you will act according to it but not know you’ve got it.
Audience
Isn’t this what most of us do?
Bohm
That’s where the problem of humanity is. In a way, you could put it that this is a problem which is in the human condition. It does not belong to anybody in particular. The human condition is such—at this time, at this stage of development—that society has come out, has grown up with individuals, vast numbers of assumptions, which are taken for granted and which we operate through the dispositions. You see, if you assume that your country is always right, you will be disposed to defend it no matter what happens.
Audience
[???] when you’re walking and you trip because you’re clumsy, and then you look back to find the thing you tripped over, and it’s not there.
Bohm
Well, then you made a wrong assumption, you see. You said, “I tripped because something was there.” You see, then you would have to say, “I tripped because I walked clumsily.” But then you might not like to say that. You might say, “My self-image is of a person who is very agile and graceful,” and it would cause me discomfort to think that I was clumsy, so therefore, you would say, No, it couldn’t be that I was clumsy.” I assume that I tripped because of some hidden obstacle, or some other reason, which—you see? So you get into all that, which we’ll discuss tomorrow—into self-deception, right?
You see, so the point is that we are conditioned by these assumptions, by the dispositions, not knowing that they’re there, and even having a considerable tendency not to want to know. Now that, I suggest, is rather a dangerous thing to be in, right? Especially if the whole human race is in it. So it always was a bit dangerous.
But let’s say during the Stone Age it was not all that bad, because people could not—you know, their ability to hurt each other was very limited. But as technology developed further and further, the thing got more dangerous, not only so that we can now destroy civilization and everything, most of the planet, not only through war, but also ecologically in other ways. We have a disposition to act in certain ways based on certain assumptions so as to gradually destroy the planet. And, in fact, if those assumptions are not changed, those dispositions, then another kind of very serious crisis may develop—or probably will.
And so, in some way, it seems to me that—well, many people have felt this—that the human race is approaching a critical situation. It can’t go on with this old way, which we’ve described. I mean, not fully, but sort of indicated. And many people feel that there really is danger—at the very least of ending this civilization, or producing tremendous destruction on the planet in other ways. On the other hand, other people would prefer not to be aware of all this. It’s part of the whole structure of assumptions. They may make assumptions that all this is unduly alarmist. And so, of course, they could say, you know… and then we could argue back and forth. But I’m just proposing this now as a thing to think about. We don’t necessarily accept it.
Yeah?
Audience
Do you suppose in a primitive society there was more room for direct perception than there is in a complicated one, technologically and otherwise, today?
Bohm
It may be true. You see, in some ways, you see, the people probably had less conditioning. You see, in order to maintain this complex society, we have used a great deal of conditioning—which is enforced; not free to be questioned. And therefore, that is another problem: how are we going to run a highly complex society with real freedom of the mind?
You see, we come to the question: what does the word “freedom” mean? One meaning of the word freedom is to be free of all this conditioning. I think it’s the most important meaning of it.
Audience
It seems to me that the danger isn’t more now and less then, because it seems that the danger is simply the danger in the human brain, the human consciousness of separation, and separate meanings, separate assumptions, in which, when one looks back throughout the whole of history, it may be a different form of conditioning, but it is still the same human being, the same conditioning. And so the danger is really that, in that conditioning, there’s no life. Because in seeing something through the past, in looking at it through an assumption, then there’s no direct perception, there’s no actual life; the living thing itself. And I think that that is the true danger.
Bohm
That has always been the danger: that life would become meaningless if we follow this sort of approach. In other words, if we proceed by taking assumptions for granted and not being conscious of them, life will lose its meaning.
But I think in some ways, simple societies were able to have more meaning than the present society, which has gotten into a very complicated situation. And there’s an actual physical danger of extinction of the whole civilization, which is much greater than existed in primitive societies. Some tribes might be extinguished, but others might continue.
If we’re thinking of the question, “Will the human race survive long enough to solve this whole question?” This is one of the first times when people might feel that maybe it won’t. Whereas, say, a hundred years ago, everybody felt: okay, there may be a lot of… all this is going on, but there is time at least for… we will go on existing, and perhaps we can hope that some days it will be solved.
Now, I think the situation has changed; that it is now distinctly possible that there isn’t that much time. You know, if the human race should go or if the civilization should go, then all these questions would also go, right?
Audience
I wonder why time, though, enters into the question at all. Because a direct perception itself has no time in it whatsoever. And to have time—let’s say, to say that time is there as a means to an end would not be a direct perception, because time being knowledge is again working with assumptions. And so direct perception is simply just here.
Bohm
Yes, and then we could raise the question: if somebody perceives here that the human race may still destroy itself, you see it very likely, the—see, I think the situation has changed. Assuming that there have been people occasionally who have had direct perception, the human race has still gone on more or less with its method. Now, you could argue that that might go on indefinitely as long as you stayed in primitive conditions. But if the conditions are not primitive, if the technology is highly advanced, then, say, sooner or later it’s not going to work. We won’t even have that possibility, you see.
See, we want to raise the question, if you talk about direct perception, we’d have to ask, then: why isn’t there direct perception? That is: we have had a million years, and there hasn’t been enough direct perception to stop the general course of events. In fact, it has moved on to this crisis.
Audience
I think the problem is that direct perceptions occur only in individuals, at one individual at a time. Only an individual can have a direct perception.
Bohm
That’s an assumption. It may not be true. You see, I’m not saying it is or isn’t true.
Audience
I think we all make the assumption, too, that it’s desirable to maintain life. I mean, the fear that mankind will come to an end is what creates a crisis.
Bohm
Well, no, I shouldn’t think that. I think crisis has been here even before people thought it was coming to an end. We’ve had this crisis going on—wars and famines and massacres and using technology for destructive purposes and economic collapse. Now it’s come to the point where people are wondering how long can it go on.
But I wanted to come back to this other point. We may have to question whether perception is necessarily only an individual affair. Because that may make it almost impossible for anything to happen. Now, we don’t know, you see. So that’s one of the points. That’s something I was hoping we could explore.
Audience
In that case, the question is, I think an assumption behind perception being an individual affair is that there’s a distinction between perception and communication.
Bohm
Yes, I want to question that distinction. I want to say that they flow into each other.
Audience
You’re saying that there’s an actual change, and that change is communicated regardless of whether you describe it or not?
Audience
So then—I’m sorry.
Bohm
Go ahead.
Audience
Then the question is: if there are people who have had direct perception in the past, and if perception and communication flow into each other, why doesn’t the human race have direct perception today? And why—
Bohm
Well, because I think we have to have a direct perception of the nature of perception and communication. You see, for example, we are now talking. Is it possible that, in this talk, a direct perception would arise among all of us in a dialogue? I don’t give an answer to that. That is what we can explore, right?
Audience
So it seems to me that talking about direct perception, we may have a problem, because you couldn’t really ever say that anyone could have a direct perception. I mean, it may occur, but no one has it.
Bohm
Well, yeah, that’s quite true, yes.
Audience
So we’re all in the same boat, somehow.
Bohm
Well, nobody can hold it and say, “That’s mine,” you see. The only thing is that other people can refuse to take it, you see.
Audience
Could we say that one of the ways we validate our conditioning in a society is by assuming that we all have the same perception?
Bohm
Well, that’s one of the assumptions of the consensus—is that we all have the same perception. That may be a false assumption, you see.
Audience
So this—we assume that we are perceiving the same thing. If we saw something that we all agreed upon in the middle of the room, and that agreement could be an assumption out of conditioning, we feel that we’ve had the same perception, but we haven’t had any perception at all.
Bohm
Maybe not. Yeah. For example, all the people in a certain nation—or most of them -- may perceive that their nation is in danger, and they must be loyal and patriotic and get excited and so on. They perceive the same danger and the same need for doing something. And that could all come out of the conditioning, out of the assumptions.
Audience
The meaning of nation and danger. But we all feel like we have the same perception.
Bohm
Well, the feeling comes out of the assumption. You see, there may be an assumption that feeling is always spontaneous. But clearly, if you assume a certain thing, you will get the corresponding feeling. You see, if you assume somebody is an enemy, you will feel very hostile, right? For example, suppose I assume that a shadow is an assailant: this will produce all sorts of feelings. The heart will go faster, the adrenaline, everything, right?
Audience
The feelings are a result of our assumptions.
Bohm
Sometimes. Very often, yeah. There may be a feeling which is part of a direct perception, you see. But I want to say that not all feelings may come out of assumptions, but a tremendous number do. And there isn’t a further assumption that people generally have that strong feelings don’t come out of assumptions, but are directly coming out of me, right? Now, therefore, that is going to be a crucial assumption to look at.
Audience
And we learn these feelings through—see, one thing technology’s done to us is helped us amalgamate our ideas, our emotions. I mean, everybody watches the same movies now and everybody reads the same books. In the old days, I don’t know what they did. So the idea of love has a feeling, and that feeling has been conditioned into us through—
Bohm
That’s right. Yes, the feeling is affected by the assumption. You see, if you’re watching the television—which is nothing but a set of spots of light—and you see the hero dangling over a cliff, you will feel the pit of your stomach is sinking just as you would feel if you were him dangling over the cliff. So that’s clearly a set of assumptions that have made you feel that way, right?
Audience
The perception and assumption factor with Orson Welles’ program, where all these people, and in fact an awful lot of people, showing that this could happen with propaganda in the sense where it wasn’t meant to be that way, caused an awful lot of emotion all over the United States.
Bohm
Yeah, that was, I think, you’re referring to the fact that a long time ago, Orson Welles broadcast a very realistic play on the radio about the Martians invading the Earth. People who tuned in in the middle didn’t know it was a play, you see. It was so realistic that they became alarmed. But, you see, it was only reasonable for them to become alarmed, given those assumptions. But it shows the power of assumptions. That if you assume the Martians are coming, if you assume that there’s good evidence the Martians are coming, then you will feel all sorts of things.
Audience
Why do you say there’s no distinction between perception and communication?
Bohm
I don’t say there is none.
Audience
If an individual has a perception, it’s only over time that he can communicate it. There is a time involved between the perception and the communication.
Bohm
I don’t say there is. I say there often is or generally is such a distinction. But I’m saying: need there be always such a distinction, is the question I’m raising. Is that clear? Whether there cannot be another kind of perception which is not just simply one person sees and he communicates it.
Audience
So, in that perception, presumably, and the communication, in that act, there would be no division of time. There would be no time involved between the act of perception and the act of communication?
Bohm
Well, first of all, this division between people would not be emphasized so much as it is in the previous state of affairs. You see, I think we could say no time. But the first point is to discuss the distinction between people; the mind—not physically, but mentally, right? And then the question of time could be raised. You see, I think that the time question comes in when you make a false separation.
Audience
If two minds, two brains, two people, didn’t have these assumptions, what is possible could be different than anything we’ve experienced.
Bohm
Yes.
Audience
And then we wouldn’t bring in the question of perception of communication. It would just happen.
Bohm
Yes. Well, since we are now bringing it in in order to inquire. Now, see, so we would have meaning, and in this perception—whether individual or together—this new meaning, I’m going to say, is a change of being at the same time. That is the key point.
Now then, just one more point. I say that, in a dialogue, just for the sake of discussion, we might make a distinction between a dialogue and a discussion. A discussion is where things go back and forth. The word “discussion” is based on the same root as the word “percussion” and “concussion.” But roughly, the idea transmitted is a ball being hit back and forth. So that’s a perfectly valid thing to do, but it’s limited. Now, see, we have to do some of that, but is that all that we can do?
Audience
Just a few days ago, I was thinking about the meaning of the word “dialogue,” and it seems to be a talking, a communion, which is going through something completely. Because the word, because “dia,” “to go through,” would be completely. So the ending of it, not the… completely, the thoroughness.
Bohm
Yes. Well, you can say that. The root of “dialogue” is dia lógos. And if we say lógos means the word—but it’s really “the meaning of the word.” But one image you could make is that there’s a flow of meaning between, through, all of us. And to think of like the stream flowing through the country, between the banks. And so if the meaning were flowing in the group, whereas this would be quite different from a discussion where the meaning is being bounced back and forth like a ball, right? So we might begin with the discussion, or we hope it would gradually, suddenly, or whatever way, turn into a dialogue.
Audience
You want me to remind you?
Bohm
Yeah. Okay, well, I think that now that’s the time we agreed that we would finish, and we start then at ten o’clock.